ADDITIONAL SYSTEM INFORMATION :
Bug confirmed on OpenJDK 21.0.4 and 22.0.2 on MacOS Sonoma 14.6.1.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM :
The "San Francisco" font, which has been the default UI font on MacOS since MacOS Catalina (released October 2019), does not display correctly in Java; the characters display with very wide spacing. See the screenshot at AppleSystemFontExhibitComparison.png

The font in question is a "hidden" font which can be loaded with either new Font(".AppleSystemUIFont", Font.PLAIN, 13) or new Font(".SFNS-Regular", Font.PLAIN, 13).

STEPS TO FOLLOW TO REPRODUCE THE PROBLEM :
Run the example JFrame in the attached sample code on MacOS Catalina or later. The string "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog" should display in a JLabel.

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
The string should be displayed with the same visual appearance as in MacOS Finder (see the earlier-referenced screenshot).
ACTUAL -
The displayed string has excessive spacing between the characters, making the overall rendered string significantly wider (see the earlier-referenced screenshot).

---------- BEGIN SOURCE ----------
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.font.TextAttribute;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
import javax.swing.*;

public class ExhibitAppleSystemFontFrame extends JFrame {
  public static final boolean ENABLE_WORKAROUND = false;

  public ExhibitAppleSystemFontFrame() {
    setDefaultCloseOperation(WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    setBackground(new java.awt.Color(255, 255, 255));

    JLabel label = new JLabel(
        "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog (workaround=" + ENABLE_WORKAROUND + ")");
    getContentPane().add(label, BorderLayout.CENTER);

    // Set colors for easy comparison with e.g. file names in the MacOS Finder
    label.setForeground(new Color(38, 38, 38));
    label.setBackground(Color.WHITE);
    label.setOpaque(true);

    /* This font is available on MacOS Catalina (10.15, released October 2019) and later.
    The name ".SFNS-Regular" seems to yield the same font. */
    Font font = new Font(".AppleSystemUIFont", Font.PLAIN, 13);
    Map<TextAttribute,Object> attrs = new HashMap<>();
    if (ENABLE_WORKAROUND) {
      attrs.put(TextAttribute.TRACKING, -0.048f);
    }
    /* Including the KERNING_ON hint can make kerning slightly better in some cases, and slightly
    worse in some other cases. It does not fix the exaggerated tracking. */
    // attrs.put(TextAttribute.KERNING, TextAttribute.KERNING_ON);
    font = font.deriveFont(attrs);
    label.setFont(font);

    setSize(new Dimension(600, 100));
  }

  public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {
    UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
    SwingUtilities.invokeLater(() -> {
      new ExhibitAppleSystemFontFrame().setVisible(true);
    });
  }
}
---------- END SOURCE ----------

CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
I was able to simulate correct character spacing by setting the TextAttribute.TRACKING text attribute to -0.048. This can be tested by setting ENABLE_WORKAROUND = true in the pasted sample code.

This is probably a rather fragile hack, though, and kerning is still off in various places when the font is used as a general UI font.

The bug was also reported in IntelliJ:
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-1756/San-Francisco-font-has-wide-spacing-on-Catalina
In that case they fixed it with a custom OpenJDK patch:
https://github.com/JetBrains/JetBrainsRuntime/commit/02da4439e833dba780d28b0d735ae93754cf8e2e

FREQUENCY : always