Inter is a free open-source neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface designed by Rasmus Andersson. Released in 2017, Inter was created to improve on-screen readability for

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

text, especially at small sizes. The typeface has since become widely used in applications and websites. Inter includes a wide range of OpenType features, support for over 140 languages, and is available as a

variable font A variable font (VF) is a font file that is able to store a continuous range of design variants. An entire typeface (font family) can be stored in such a file, with an infinite number of fonts available to be sampled. The variable font technol ...

Design characteristics

Inter was created during Andersson's tenure at

Figma Figma is a collaborative web application for interface design, with additional offline features enabled by desktop applications for macOS and Windows. The feature set of Figma focuses on user interface and user experience design, with an empha ...

to address perceived limitations in existing typefaces like

Roboto Roboto () is a typeface family developed by Google. The first typeface was created as the system font for its Android (operating system), Android operating system, and released in 2011 for Android Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sa ...

. The typeface is characterized by a tall

x-height upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the le ...

, open apertures, which make it optimized for readability on screens and at small text sizes. The variable font includes an optical size axis allowing it to adapt for readability at all font sizes, and a weight axis allowing the weight to be adjusted smoothly from Thin (100) to Black (900) without the need for additional font files. Inter was initially metrically compatible with Roboto, but by 2018, it adopted its own vertical metrics and unique design features. The

italics In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Along with blackletter and roman type, it served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography. Owing to the influence f ...

in Inter are true italics (rather than

oblique type Oblique type is a form of type that slants slightly to the right, used for the same purposes as italic type. Unlike italic type, however, it does not use different glyph shapes; it uses the same glyphs as roman type, except slanted. Oblique and i ...

), and there is extensive support for Open Type features such as a choice between single and double story "a", tabular figures, square or round quote marks and commas, number variants, and various ligatures. Inter is sometimes considered similar to the Apple system font,

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

History

Inter was designed in 2016 by Rasmus Andersson who wanted a font that was easier to read on computer screens than Roboto while retaining its vertical proportions. Earlier versions of Inter (named "Interface" and "Inter UI") included glyphs and followed the vertical glyph metrics (ascender and descender) from Roboto, while Roboto glyphs were included as a fallback for characters that had not been redesigned in Inter. Inter changed its vertical glyph metrics in 2018, making it different from that of Roboto. The typeface had to be released in two combined licenses: the

SIL Open Font License The SIL Open Font License (or OFL in short) is one of the major open font licenses, which allows embedding, or "bundling", of the font in commercially sold products. OFL is a free and open source license. It was created by SIL Global, the ...

for original glyph designs for Inter and

Apache License The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It allows users to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software ...

for the fallback Roboto glyphs and outlines. This exception was removed in 2020 after Roboto was re-licensed from Apache to OFL.

Variants

''Inter Display'' is an experimental display version for large font sizes. This work has already been partially integrated into Inter with the introduction of optical sizing. Another variant with similar purpose, ''Inter Tight'', was specifically designed for

Google Workspace Google Workspace (formerly G Suite, formerly Google Apps) is a collection of cloud computing, Productivity software, productivity and Collaborative software, collaboration tools, software and products developed and marketed by Google. It con ...

and other applications that do not support control over letter spacing. Inter Tight shares the same glyph shapes as Inter, while Inter Display contains redesigned glyphs.

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

uses Adwaita Sans which is a customized version of Inter. The Inter files distributed by Google Fonts do not include many of Inter's font features, which have been removed to reduce the size of the files in order to make them faster to load.

Usage

As well as serving as a UI typeface in applications such as

Notion Notion or Notions may refer to: Software * Notion (music software), a music composition and performance program * Notion (productivity software), a note-taking and project-management program from Notion Labs, Inc. * Notion (window manager), the ...

and Pixar Presto, and operating systems

elementary OS Elementary OS (stylized as elementary OS) is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu LTS. It promotes itself as a "thoughtful, capable, and ethical" replacement to macOS and Microsoft Windows, Windows and has a pay what you want, pay-what-you-wan ...

and

, Inter is now found extensively on the internet, including high profile websites such as

GitLab GitLab is a software forge primarily developed by GitLab Inc. It is available as a community edition and a commercial edition. History GitLab was created in 2011 by Ukrainian programmer Dmitriy Zaporozhets as a side project written in Rub ...

ISO The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Me ...

Mozilla Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

, and

Zurich Airport Zurich Airport is the largest international airport of Switzerland and the airline hub, principal hub of Swiss International Air Lines. It serves Zurich, the largest city in Switzerland, and, with its surface transport links, much of the rest o ...

. Inter is one of the most widely used typefaces on the Internet. For the twelve months ending May 2025, Inter was accessed 414 billion times on

Google Fonts Google Fonts (formerly known as Google Web Fonts) is a computer font and web font service owned by Google. This includes Free-software license, free and open source font families, an interactive web directory for browsing the library, and Applica ...

, with 57% growth over the previous 12 months, making it the 16th most accessed font on Google Fonts. Inter has been included in books on web development, been used to typeset books, used in academic studies, and is made available in major typesetting software such as

CTAN C mathematical operations are a group of functions in the C standard library, standard library of the C programming language implementing basic mathematical functions. Different C standards provide different, albeit backwards-compatible, sets of ...

and MiKTeX, making it accessible for academic and technical publishing.

External links

* official site * source * Inter on Google Fonts

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite web , title=Inter font family , website=rsms.me , url=https://rsms.me/inter/ , access-date=May 27, 2025 {{cite web , title=Inter OpenType features , url=https://rsms.me/inter/#features , access-date=May 27, 2025 {{cite web , title=The Birth of Inter , url=https://www.figma.com/blog/the-birth-of-inter/ , access-date=May 26, 2025 , first=Carmel , last=DeAmicus , website=

, date=August 8, 2019 {{cite web , title=Inter – README , url=https://github.com/rsms/inter , access-date=May 26, 2025 , website=

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

{{cite web , title=The story behind Inter , url=https://changelog.com/podcast/449 , access-date=May 26, 2025 , website=The Changelog , date=June 30, 2021 {{cite web , title=34 minimalist fonts for sleek designs , url=https://www.figma.com/resource-library/minimalist-fonts/#font-16-inter , access-date=May 27, 2025 , website=

{{cite web , url=https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Inter , website=

, access-date=May 27, 2025 , title=Inter font {{cite web , title=Inter Tight , url=https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Inter+Tight , access-date=May 27, 2025 , website=

{{cite web , title=GNOME Release Notes , url=https://release.gnome.org/48/#new-fonts , access-date=May 28, 2025 , date=March 19, 2025 , website=GNOME Release Notes {{cite web , title=Inter v4 (Discussion #463) , url=https://github.com/rsms/inter/discussions/463 , access-date=October 29, 2023 , date=May 29, 2022 , website=

{{cite web , title=Delete LICENSE for some glyph outlines.txt , url=https://github.com/rsms/inter/commit/1b5fcd816c78fa7184c8729565c7a1ee08acf9cb , access-date=November 18, 2017 , date=August 18, 2020 , website=

{{cite web , url=https://github.com/rsms/inter/releases/tag/v2.5 , access-date=June 6, 2023 , title=Inter UI Release v2.5 , date=February 18, 2018 , website=

{{cite web , title=Does the Google Fonts version support font-feature-settings? , url=https://github.com/rsms/inter/issues/248 , access-date=May 28, 2025 , date=May 20, 2020 , website=

{{cite web , title=An ode to the Inter typeface , url=https://mattwestcott.org/blog/an-ode-to-the-inter-typeface , access-date=May 28, 2025 , first=Matt , last=Westcott , date=April 28, 2020 {{cite web , title=Why Typeface Choice Matters (Even When It Doesn't) , url=https://medium.com/experience/why-typeface-choice-matters-even-when-it-doesnt-17d41d646ccf , access-date=May 28, 2025 , date=October 26, 2020 , first=Jay , last=Sethi , website=Medium {{cite web , title=Inter , url=https://www.typewolf.com/inter , access-date=May 29, 2025 , website=Typewolf {{cite web , title=Google Fonts Analytics , url=https://fonts.google.com/analytics , access-date=May 29, 2025 , website=Google Fonts {{cite book , title=Responsive web design with HTML5 and CSS : develop future-proof responsive websites using the latest HTML5 and CSS techniques , author=Ben Frain , isbn=9781839219795 , date=2020 {{cite book , title=Affects, Interfaces, Events , publisher=Imbricate! Press , isbn=979-8-7295-2452-5 , date=2021 , editor1-last=Thomsen , editor1-first=Bodil Marie Stavning , editor2-last=Kofoed , editor2-first=Jette , editor3-last=Fritsch , editor3-first=Jonas {{cite web , title=Inter font package , url=https://ctan.org/pkg/inter , website=CTAN , access-date=May 29, 2025 {{cite web , title=Inter font package , url=https://miktex.org/packages/inter , website=MiKTeX , access-date=May 29, 2025 {{cite web , title=Inter font: Why it's so popular , url=https://uxheart.com/why-i-love-using-the-inter-font/ , website=UX Heart , date=June 27, 2024 , access-date=May 29, 2025 {{cite web , title=Interview with Rasmus Andersson , url=https://onepagelove.com/yo-rsms , website=One Page Love , access-date=May 29, 2025 {{cite web , title=How a font made in 15-minute breaks – how "Inter" came to be used by Mozilla and GitHub , url=https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20190813-the-birth-of-inter/ , date=August 13, 2019 , access-date=May 29, 2025 {{cite thesis , title = Typography: from reading to seeing , language = en , author = Passeira, Sofia Torres Gonçalves Fiteiro , date = September 7, 2022 , publisher = Universidade de Coimbra, DEI-FCTUC , url = https://hdl.handle.net/10316/102192 , access-date = May 29, 2025 {{Cite conference , last1 = de Lacerda Pataca , first1 = Caluã , last2 = Hassan , first2 = Saad , last3 = Tinker , first3 = Nathan , last4 = Peiris , first4 = Roshan Lalintha , last5 = Huenerfauth , first5 = Matt , title = Caption Royale: Exploring the Design Space of Affective Captions from the Perspective of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Individuals , book-title = Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , date = 2024 , publisher = Association for Computing Machinery , location = New York, NY, USA , doi = 10.1145/3613904.3642258 , url = https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642258 , isbn = 9798400703300 , conference = CHI '24 , url-access = subscription {{cite web , title=After 14 Years of Cantarell – GNOME Is Testing a New Default Font , url=https://www.omglinux.com/gnome-may-switch-to-inter-font/ , access-date=May 29, 2025 , website=OMG! Linux , date=July 7, 2024 Sans-serif typefaces Neo-grotesque sans-serif typefaces Typefaces with optical sizes Computer-related introductions in 2017 Typefaces and fonts introduced in 2017 Cyrillic typefaces Display typefaces Greek typefaces Latin-script typefaces Open-source typefaces

Design characteristics

History

Variants

Usage

See also

External links

References