April 18, 2026
Icons, drama, and big PDF energy
Show HN: Sfsym – Export Apple SF Symbols as Vector SVG/PDF/PNG
Dev drops Apple icon exporter; commenters feud over PDFs, licenses, and taste
TLDR: New tool sfsym exports Apple’s SF Symbols to SVG, PDF, or PNG exactly as macOS renders them, delighting designers and developers. Comments erupted over whether it’s okay to use commercially under Apple’s license and why PDF is the default, with fans excited and skeptics side‑eyeing legal and format choices.
A tiny command‑line tool called sfsym just hit the scene, letting Mac users export Apple’s official SF Symbols—those clean little icons you see all over iPhone and Mac—straight into SVG, PDF, or PNG. The dev says the shapes come directly from Apple’s system, so what you export is exactly what Apple draws.
Cue the comment chaos. Fans cheered the convenience—one asked if animations are next—while skeptics instantly pulled the emergency brake on two fronts: lawyers and layout. The tool warns SF Symbols are Apple’s property and only licensed for apps on Apple platforms, which triggered a chorus of “Can I use this on a commercial site?” and side‑eye at the “don’t ship to Android” bit. Another flashpoint: the default format is PDF. In non‑nerd terms, that’s like choosing a print‑friendly file over the web’s favorite SVG—so the crowd pounced. “Why PDF, ever?” became the meme of the thread.
There’s also a spicy subplot about the tool using a hidden Apple feature that could break with a future macOS update—translation: fragile magic. Meanwhile, purists chimed in to say SF Symbols aren’t even their favorite set, linking Apple’s official page for context: developer.apple.com/sf-symbols. Love it or leave it, the vibe is clear: sfsym is slick, but the community is split between “ship it,” “is this legal,” and “PDF… really?”
Key Points
- •Sfsym is a macOS command-line tool to export Apple SF Symbols to SVG, PDF, or PNG using the system’s symbol renderer for accurate vector geometry.
- •Use of SF Symbols is restricted by Apple’s license to artwork/mockups for Apple-platform apps; the tool warns not to embed them in non-Apple platforms.
- •Sfsym accesses a private ivar on NSSymbolImageRep to retrieve CUINamedVectorGlyph; it has worked from macOS 13–26 but may break, and the tool fails fast if so.
- •Installation is via Homebrew (prebuilt universal binary for macOS 13+ on Apple silicon or Intel) or from source with Xcode Command Line Tools and Swift.
- •Features include color/mode/weight/scale/size controls, a JSON summary option, and a batch mode achieving ~800 exports per second.