Roboto () is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface family developed by

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as the system font for its mobile operating system Android, and released in 2011 for Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich". The entire font family has been licensed under the Apache license. In 2014, Roboto was redesigned for Android 5.0 "Lollipop".

Usage

Roboto is the default font on Android, and since 2013, other Google services such as

Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating sy ...

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

, and

Google Images Google Images (previously Google Image Search) is a search engine owned by Google that allows users to search the World Wide Web for images. It was introduced on July 12, 2001 due to a demand for pictures of the green Versace dress of Jennifer L ...

. In 2017, Roboto was used on the LCD countdown clocks of the

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October ...

B Division B Division, Division B, or variant may refer to: * ''B Division'' (New York City Subway) * ''B Division'' (Irish League), association football * ''Division B'' (Scottish Football League) * ''Divizia B'' (Romanian Football League) * Moldovan "B ...

lines. Roboto Bold is the default font in

Unreal Engine 4 Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game ''Unreal (1998 video game), Unreal''. Initially developed for Personal computer, PC first-person shooters, i ...

, and in Kodi. Roboto Condensed is used to display Information on European versions of

Nintendo Switch The is a hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. The console itself is a tablet that can either be docked for use as a home console or used as a portable device, making it a ...

packaging, including physical releases of games. Utsav Network uses Roboto for its wordmark.

History

Development

The font was designed entirely in-house by Christian Robertson who previously had released an expanded Ubuntu Titling font through his personal type foundry Betatype. The font was officially made available for free download on January 12, 2012, on the newly launched Android Design website. Compared to Android's previous system font, the humanist sans-serif Droid, Roboto belongs to the

neo-grotesque In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...

genre of sans-serif typefaces. It includes Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold and Black weights with matching

oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) *Oblique angle, in geometry *Oblique triangle, in geometry * Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the b ...

styles rather than true italics. It also includes condensed styles in Light, Regular and Bold, also with matching

designs.

Redesign

In 2014, Matias Duarte announced at

Google I/O Google I/O (or simply I/O) is an annual developer conference held by Google in Mountain View, California. "I/O" stands for Input/Output, as well as the slogan "Innovation in the Open". The event's format is similar to Google Developer Day. Hi ...

that Roboto was significantly redesigned for Android 5.0 "Lollipop". Punctuation marks and the tittles in the lowercase "i" and "j" were changed from square to rounded, the bottom surface of the top part of the number "1" points downwards instead of horizontal, the tail part of the numbers "6" and "9" have been slightly shortened (in resemblance to "

Trebuchet MS Trebuchet MS is a humanist sans-serif typeface that Vincent Connare designed for Microsoft Corporation in 1996. Trebuchet MS was the font used for the window titles in the Windows XP default theme, succeeding MS Sans Serif and Tahoma. Release ...

"), and the entire typeface was made “slightly wider and rounder” with many changes in details. File:Android 5.1.1 on Google Nexus 7 2012.png, Android 5.1.1 on a Google Nexus 7, featuring the redesigned Roboto font. File:Roboto (typeface).svg, Sample text of Roboto in 2013 in various font weights and sizes, prior to the redesign for Android 5. Unlike now, the leg of the R has a curl, the same as in Helvetica.

Language support

Roboto supports

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

(partial) and

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...

scripts. On Android, the

Noto font Noto is a font family comprising over 100 individual fonts, which are together designed to cover all the scripts encoded in the Unicode standard. , Noto fonts cover all 93 scripts defined in Unicode version 6.1 (April 2012), although fewer than ...

is used for languages not supported by Roboto, including Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese,

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

, Thai and

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

Variations

Roboto Slab

Roboto Slab is a

slab serif In typography, a slab serif (also called ''mechanistic'', ''square serif'', ''antique'' or ''Egyptian'') typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular ( Rockwell), ...

font based on Roboto. It was introduced in March 2013, as the default font in Google's note-taking service

Google Keep Google Keep is a note-taking service included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. The service also includes: Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms and Google Sites. G ...

. (The font was changed to the sans-serif Roboto in 2018.) It is available in four weights: thin, light, regular and bold. However, no oblique versions were released for it. In November 2019, the typeface was updated and added 5 new weights: Extra-Light, Medium, Semi-Bold, Extra-Bold and Black, and a variable font axis ranging from 100 to 900. It also was modified with some characteristics from the sans-serif Roboto and to slightly resemble most slab-serif typefaces, such as "R", "K", "k", "g", "C", "S", etc.

Roboto Mono

Roboto Mono is a monospace font based on Roboto. It is available in seven weights: thin, extra-light, light, regular, medium, semi-bold and bold, with oblique stylings for each weight.

Heebo

Heebo is an extension of Roboto that includes Hebrew characters.

Roboto Serif

Roboto Serif is a version of Roboto with serifs. It was debuted in 2022 to fill the serif niche.

Reception

Google developed the font to be "modern, yet approachable" and "emotional," but Roboto received mixed reviews on its release.

Joshua Topolsky Joshua Ryan Topolsky (born October 19, 1977) is an American technology journalist. He is also a record producer, and DJ under the stage name Joshua Ryan. Topolsky was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of technology news network ''The Verge'' ...

, Editor-In-Chief of technology news and media network ''

The Verge ''The Verge'' is an American technology news website operated by Vox Media, publishing news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, consumer electronics news, and podcasts. The website launched on November 1, 2011, and uses Vox Media ...

'', describes the font as "clean and modern, but not overly futuristic – not a science fiction font". However, typography commentator Stephen Coles of Typographica called the initial release of Roboto "a Four-headed Frankenfont", describing it as a "hodgepodge" of different typographic styles which do not work well together. Other type design professionals called out obvious errors in accented glyphs.