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How sure can you be that the font you specify will be present on the end user's machine? This is the latest snapshot of the Code Style Mac font survey and should give you greater confidence in selecting a font.
Subscribe to the news feed for these survey results: 
The most common fonts on Mac systems are the classic sans serif font Helvetica and Lucida Grande at 100% frequency. The sans serif font Geneva and monospace font Monaco are joint second most common fonts on Mac OS. These are followed by the classic typewriter font Courier to complete the 5 most common Mac fonts at 99% frequency.
Several Mac font families are reported with similar frequency to standard Web safe fonts Courier New and much-maligned Comic Sans MS, at more than 90% frequency:
| Font name | Installed (%) | Sample | Image | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Helvetica | 100.00% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Lucida Grande | 100.00% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Geneva | 99.47% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Monaco | 99.47% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Courier | 98.94% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Times | 98.15% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Arial | 97.63% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Verdana | 97.63% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Helvetica Neue | 95.78% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Georgia | 95.51% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Times New Roman | 94.99% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Trebuchet MS | 94.72% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Arial Black | 94.20% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Gill Sans | 93.14% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Courier New | 92.61% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Futura | 92.08% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Impact | 91.82% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Arial Rounded MT Bold | 91.29% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Comic Sans MS | 91.29% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Andale Mono | 91.03% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Apple Chancery | 91.03% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Skia | 91.03% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Arial Narrow | 90.50% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Optima | 90.24% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Baskerville | 89.97% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Copperplate | 89.97% |
|
Sample | Image |
| American Typewriter | 89.71% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Didot | 89.45% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Hoefler Text | 89.45% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Papyrus | 88.92% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Zapfino | 88.92% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Big Caslon | 88.13% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Marker Felt | 88.13% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Brush Script MT | 86.81% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Herculanum | 86.81% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Tahoma | 81.53% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Palatino | 79.68% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Lucida Bright | 77.04% |
|
Sample | |
| Lucida Sans | 77.04% |
|
Sample | |
| Lucida Sans Typewriter | 77.04% |
|
Sample | |
These are only the top forty fonts, see the full Mac font survey results (about 100 KB) for a complete listing.
These figures are the cumulative total of font survey submissions since April 2007. Older submissions are archived to maintain a 3 year rolling sample. The table shows the average submission rate and totals for each operating system, and the the date the applet-based survey was introduced.
| Survey | Windows | Mac | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|
| Submissions per week | 10 | 2 | 2 |
| Submission sample | 2063 | 379 | 329 |
| Survey applet from | 21 April 2007 | 12 May 2007 | 21 February 2009 |
| Fonts surveyed | 292 | 133 | 102 |
Our main interest is to build reliable font stacks for screen rendering, but CSS allows us to specify a different font stack to print Web pages. The most reliable way to apply print media style sheets is to use the media attribute on the style sheet link element. The selectors you choose and font-family declarations you add to this style sheet will only apply when the page is printed.
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/styles/print.css" media="print" />
What font combinations would you choose for print? Use the font stack builder to create a print font stack and submit your ideas.
Contribute to the survey and discover the new Web safe fonts.
Set an unconventional font style and stack fallback fonts with confidence.
Font jargon: CSS font family glossary
Find fonts: Anchor Points: Font foundries & sources
Get the sampler font code: Sampler.css
