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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.

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The most common Mac fonts

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.

The new Web safe fonts

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:

Most common fonts on Mac systems to 14 August 2010
Font name Installed (%) Sample Image
Helvetica 100.00% 100.00% Sample Image
Lucida Grande 100.00% 100.00% Sample Image
Geneva 99.47% 99.47% Sample Image
Monaco 99.47% 99.47% Sample Image
Courier 98.94% 98.94% Sample Image
Times 98.15% 98.15% Sample Image
Arial 97.63% 97.63% Sample Image
Verdana 97.63% 97.63% Sample Image
Helvetica Neue 95.78% 95.78% Sample Image
Georgia 95.51% 95.51% Sample Image
Times New Roman 94.99% 94.99% Sample Image
Trebuchet MS 94.72% 94.72% Sample Image
Arial Black 94.20% 94.20% Sample Image
Gill Sans 93.14% 93.14% Sample Image
Courier New 92.61% 92.61% Sample Image
Futura 92.08% 92.08% Sample Image
Impact 91.82% 91.82% Sample Image
Arial Rounded MT Bold 91.29% 91.29% Sample Image
Comic Sans MS 91.29% 91.29% Sample Image
Andale Mono 91.03% 91.03% Sample Image
Apple Chancery 91.03% 91.03% Sample Image
Skia 91.03% 91.03% Sample Image
Arial Narrow 90.50% 90.50% Sample Image
Optima 90.24% 90.24% Sample Image
Baskerville 89.97% 89.97% Sample Image
Copperplate 89.97% 89.97% Sample Image
American Typewriter 89.71% 89.71% Sample Image
Didot 89.45% 89.45% Sample Image
Hoefler Text 89.45% 89.45% Sample Image
Papyrus 88.92% 88.92% Sample Image
Zapfino 88.92% 88.92% Sample Image
Big Caslon 88.13% 88.13% Sample Image
Marker Felt 88.13% 88.13% Sample Image
Brush Script MT 86.81% 86.81% Sample Image
Herculanum 86.81% 86.81% Sample Image
Tahoma 81.53% 81.53% Sample Image
Palatino 79.68% 79.68% Sample Image
Lucida Bright 77.04% 77.04% Sample  
Lucida Sans 77.04% 77.04% Sample  
Lucida Sans Typewriter 77.04% 77.04% Sample  

These are only the top forty fonts, see the full Mac font survey results (about 100 KB) for a complete listing.

Font survey statistics

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

Font stacks for print style sheets

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.

CSS font family resources

Web font survey and sampler

Contribute to the survey and discover the new Web safe fonts.

Common fonts by generic font family

Set an unconventional font style and stack fallback fonts with confidence.

Web font foundations

Font jargon: CSS font family glossary

Find fonts: Anchor Points: Font foundries & sources

Get the sampler font code: Sampler.css

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