It was released in 2011 and is based on his earlier design called Droid Sans, which was specifically created for Android mobile devices but with slight modifications to its width.

The typeface is characterized by its wide apertures on many letters and a large x-height, making it highly legible on screens and at small sizes.

[6] According to Google, it was developed with an "upright stress, open forms and a neutral, yet friendly appearance" and is "optimized for legibility across print, web, and mobile interfaces.

"[3] Its design is similar to that of Matteson's Droid Sans, created as the first user interface font for Android phones, but with wider characters and the inclusion of italic variants.

"[8] The character repertoire contains 897 glyphs, covering the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets with a wide range of diacritics.

In January 2014, Israeli type designer Yanek Iontef released an extension font covering the Hebrew alphabet with support for niqqud (but not cantillation marks) for early access.