SF Symbols Changes in iOS 16.1

Introduction

When examining the iOS 16.1 simulator in Xcode 14.1 beta 3, I noticed that there had been changes to SF Symbols. A lot of changes! 311 symbols have been added and 22 symbols have been renamed. iOS 16.1 has now been publicly released and there were no symbol changes after beta 3.

  • SF Symbols v1.1 available in iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/Mac Catalyst 13.1, watchOS 6.1 and macOS 11.0
  • SF Symbols v2.0 available in iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/Mac Catalyst 14.0, watchOS 7.0 and macOS 11.0
  • SF Symbols v2.1 available in iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/Mac Catalyst 14.2, watchOS 7.1 and macOS 11.0
  • SF Symbols v2.2 available in iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/Mac Catalyst 14.5, watchOS 7.4 and macOS 11.3
  • SF Symbols v3.0 available in iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/Mac Catalyst 15.0, watchOS 8.0 and macOS 12.0
  • SF Symbols v3.1 available in iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/Mac Catalyst 15.1, watchOS 8.1 and macOS 12.0
  • SF Symbols v3.2 available in iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/Mac Catalyst 15.2, watchOS 8.3 and macOS 12.1
  • SF Symbols v3.3 available in iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/Mac Catalyst 15.4, watchOS 8.5 and macOS 12.3
  • SF Symbols v4.0 available in iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/Mac Catalyst 16.0, watchOS 9.0 and macOS 13.0
  • SF Symbols v4.1 available in iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/Mac Catalyst 16.1, watchOS 9.1 and macOS 13.0

SF Symbol Browsing Apps

When this article was first written, 29th September 2022, the link to Apple’s own SF Symbols Mac app on the SF Symbols 4 page hadn’t been updated since iOS 16.0 beta 2 (version 4.0 build 76.1). That was updated on 26th October 2022 to version 4.0 build 80 and includes all 4491 symbols included in iOS 16.1 and macOS 13. As of 29th October, the link on the Design Resource page is older (version 4.0 build 78) and only includes the 4,180 symbols that were included in the released version of iOS 16.0.

Apple’s SF Symbols Mac app v4.0 (build 80) has 4,491 symbols
iOS 16.3b3 System Images ‘All’ category and data set chooser menu in Adaptivity v9.1.1 on 12.9" iPad Pro

Changes in SF Symbols 4.1

iOS/iPadOS 16.1 beta 3 was released on 27th September 2022. There are far too many symbol changes to list them all in detail. The changes fall into several different categories:

  • Renamed symbols 22 existing symbols have been renamed
  • Localized variants 40 existing symbols have gained Arabic localizations
  • New category there is a new ‘Automotive’ category

New Symbols

There are 333 symbols in the ‘What’s New’ category in SF Symbols v4.1 but some of them are renamed versions of existing symbols rather than completely new symbols (see below for more information).

iOS 16.3b3 System Images ‘What’s New’ category in Adaptivity v9.1.1 on 12.9" iPad Pro
iOS 16.3b3 System Images ‘Added’ smart collection in Adaptivity v9.1.1 on 12.9" iPad Pro, page 1 of 4
iOS 16.3b3 System Images ‘Added’ smart collection in Adaptivity v9.1.1 on 12.9" iPad Pro, page 2 of 4
iOS 16.3b3 System Images ‘Added’ smart collection in Adaptivity v9.1.1 on 12.9" iPad Pro, page 3 of 4
iOS 16.3b3 System Images ‘Added’ smart collection in Adaptivity v9.1.1 on 12.9" iPad Pro, page 4 of 4

Renamed Symbols

22 existing symbols have been renamed in iOS 16.1 beta 1. For apps that support earlier iOS versions, the older names must be used. When running on iOS 16.1 and later, either name can be used.

iOS 16.3b3 System Images ‘Renamed’ smart collection in Adaptivity v9.1.1 on 12.9" iPad Pro
iOS 16.3b3 System Images ‘Renamed’ smart collection, context menu and List view in Adaptivity v9.1.1 on iPhone 14 Pro

Restricted Symbols

The number of restricted symbols has increased from 289 in iOS 16.0 to 316 in iOS 16.1 beta 3. The vast majority of the additions are the gen2 and gen3 iPhone and gen2 iPad symbols.

iOS 16.3b3 System Images ‘Restricted’ smart collection in Adaptivity v9.1.1 on 12.9" iPad Pro

Localized Variants

As far as I can tell, the only changes to localizations were to add Arabic versions of the 0.circle, 0.circle.fill, 0.square, 0.square.fill (and similarly for 19) symbols. That’s 40 in total.

iOS 16.3b3 System Images ‘Language Localized’ smart collection in Adaptivity v9.1.1 on 12.9" iPad Pro

New Category

Whilst updating my data files for Adaptivity and SF Menu Bar I noticed that there is a new ‘Automotive’ category with 272 symbols. A lot of the new symbols in iOS 16.1 beta 3 are in this category.

iOS 16.3b3 System Images ‘Automotive’ category in Adaptivity v9.1.1 on 12.9" iPad Pro

Resources

Apple

WWDC 2022: 10157, What’s new in SF Symbols 4

Other Articles

How to dynamically adjust the color of an SF Symbol by Paul Hudson

Adaptivity

Adaptivity has many other features in addition to browsing SF Symbols. It is primarily a tool to visualize the different window sizes, layout margins, readable content guides, bar heights and Dynamic Type sizes that a modern, adaptive, iOS app uses when running on different devices and iPad multitasking sizes.

Visualizing sizes, layout and margins in Adaptivity on 12.9" iPad Pro

SF Menu Bar

SF Menu Bar is a menu bar app for the Mac which is powered by the same SF Symbol data as Adaptivity. When run on macOS 13, it will show symbols added in iOS 16.0/16.1 and macOS 13. More information is available on my web site.

SF Menu Bar v1.11 running on macOS 13.0

Other Articles That You Might Like

The new iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max devices introduce new screen resolutions. See my article How iOS Apps Adapt to the various iPhone 14 Screen Sizes for information.

--

--

Independent and freelance software developer for iPhone, iPad and Mac

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store
Geoff Hackworth

Independent and freelance software developer for iPhone, iPad and Mac