SF Pro special characters are only rendered on macOS, not on iPadOs or iOS

Support
1

What I did: I copied a special character from the SF Pro font in the Font Book under macOS and pasted it in the macOS version of Agenda (see screenshot 1). (I use the special characters to embellish links to local files or external applications.)

What happened: In the macOS version of Agenda the special character is displayed correctly (see screenshot 2), in the iPadOS version (see screenshot 3) and iOS version (see screenshot 4) the special character is not rendered correctly.

What I expected: The special character to also be correctly displayed in the iPadOS and the iOS version of Agenda.

Things that might be helpful to know (Agenda version, OS and model, etc):

  • MacBook Pro 14" 2021 (Chip: Apple M1 Pro; macOS: Sequoia 15.5; Agenda version: 20.1.1)
  • iPad Air 5th gen. (iPadOS version: 18.5; Agenda version: 20.1.1)
  • iPhone 12 (iOS version: 18.5; Agenda version: 20.1.1)
  • The font in all three versions of Agenda is set to San Francisco (System).

Screenshot 1
Screenshot 11920×1433 103 KB

Screenshot 2
Screenshot 21566×704 142 KB

Screenshot 3
Screenshot 31640×2360 169 KB

Screenshot 4
Screenshot 41170×2532 183 KB

2

I doubt that font is included on iOS, so it can’t be displayed. The same is true of any font that is missing.

There is not much we can do about that, I’m afraid.

3

Thank you for your reply. But I still don’t really understand how SF Pro can’t be included in iOS, because SF Pro is the default font used by Apple for all iOS UI.

SF Pro
This neutral, flexible, sans-serif typeface is the system font for iOS, iPadOS, macOS and tvOS.
Fonts - Apple Developer

I rather thought that under iOS and iPadOS the import of some special characters from SF Pro was missing, because under macOS the font works as expected.

4

I think you might be thinking of SF Symbols. Version 7 beta is released but you will probably want V6.

5

I’m not sure exactly, but is it perhaps because you have a different font selected as default on the devices? The standard font for Agenda content — not UI elements — is Avenir. You can change that in the settings. Perhaps if you change to SF on both devices, it might work.

6

I already have San Francisco selected as display font in the Agenda settings on all three platforms, so unfortunately this doesnt resolve the issue. But I found that on macOS even with Avenir or some other font selected, the symbols are rendered correctly.

Screenshot
Screenshot1434×510 56.1 KB

7

I will have to look into it. I’m guessing that iOS simply doesn’t include the SFSymbols in the standard font. Not sure.

I know that when I get the SFSymbols app on macOS, it does tell me I have to download extra fonts. So maybe that is related.

Which symbols are available will also depend on your OS. They add new ones each year, so an old one won’t have some.

Note that you may have better luck with emoji, because they are standard unicode characters.