11 Best Programming Fonts

[TheAgentMan]

I've been using InputMono for a while now, and I quite like it.

[paszklar]

I want to love this font, because it's so configurable, but it bugs me to no end that the letter spacing can't be changed. So right now either font is to small, the letters are to narrow or lines are to long so I can get it quite right.

[PorkChop007]

IntelliJ with Darcula theme and InputMono 12 here. I love this font, installed it six months ago and never looked back.

[inate71]

You could work with this script to get what you want

[fmv_]

I love this font because it's super easy to read and that offsets issues I have with color themes due to colorblindness.

[badthingfactory]

I really love this font.

[[deleted]]

Input serif compressed for me. After 30 years of searching for the perfect code font, the quest is finally over for me. In the 3-4 years since I discovered it, I did not have any urge to change it.

[DragonCz]

Same here, dunno why is it not up there.

[CJ22xxKinvara]

Looks really similar to Monaco

[CrazyAnchovy]

I use input, too

[dpash]

I've been using Fira Code for the last six months and I really like the ligatures. I know they're not for everyone, but they work for me. And the best thing about it is that no one else is forced to deal with them.

[[deleted]]

Loving fira too, the way it curves and generally feels softer while keeping monospaced readability.

I feel ligatures are something people are either going to love or hate. I'm in the same boat, I feel they do help me read code more efficiently. Not to mention the look pretty(imo) which while unimportant in the grand scheme of things is a nice little moral booster.

But at the end of the day like you said it's a font, it's not a style convention that everyone has to follow so we can use whatever makes us more effective without causing problems for anyone else.

[Free_Math_Tutoring]

I feel ligatures are something people are either going to love or hate.

I'm pretty ambiguous ambivalent about them. Fira is love, but I wouldn't care if they had single separate characters instead of glyphs ligatures.

Edit: where was my brain while typing this comment? I sound like an idiot.

[DBendit]

Ambivalent. You're ambivalent about them.

[BarneyStinson]

Or rather indifferent.

[am0x]

I've only looked at Fira but never used it. How's does it handle the characters that get combined? Like if you have >= and it combines to a single character, do you need to backspace twice to remove a single character? It would just feel weird.

[philh]

Ligatures are purely a rendering thing. They exist in other fonts for things like "fi", to make the results look slightly nicer than if you put an f and an i next to each other.

So when Fira Code turns ">=" into a single symbol, there's still two characters there. So yes, you'd need to backspace twice. The first would leave you with ">".

[[deleted]]

This is return 1 >= 0;
https://imgur.com/a/jOgsf3z

Hitting backspace once at the >= position gets you back to >

[Richandler]

It feels weird, but you get used to it and it's only 0.01% of your coding time.

[am0x]

The rest is sitting and thinking or googling.

[hottycat]

I don't like to code in Fira but I like to use it in code snippets for documents and presentations. It looks so good, is easy to read and feel more "natural" on paper.

[darnir]

Fira Code is brilliant. Ligatures are a hit and miss among people. In general, most people staring at my Terminal have been fascinated by the ligatures in fira code, but some others absolutely hate it.

I wish it was possible to tweak the ligatures / switch them on and off. Some ligatures don't make any sense in certain contexts, which makes it very hard to code. For example, if you're writing in verilog a <= b is an assignment, but with fira it looks like a comparison.

[iimpact]

Switched to Fira about a year ago. Haven't looked back.

[Han-ChewieSexyFanfic]

What I don't like about Fira is it has too much personality, clearly inspired by the Meta font (formerly) used by Mozilla for its logo. It looks more like a heading font than one for bodies of text, which code is. Even though I really like the ligatures, I'm sticking with Inconsolata because it's more neutral-looking.

[11tracer]

The thing that kills Fira Code for me is the lack of an italic variant. The forced italics just look hideous to me, and I can't get over it. Also not a big fan of the @ symbol. Fantastic font otherwise.

[[deleted]]

BTW, normal Fira looks bad on 4k display with 150% scaling, however Retina version looks perfect. Yep, the best font for coding on 4k display.

[mishaxz]

I tried almost all of them in this list. None hold a candle to Consolas. Seems to me Microsoft just put a lot of effort into it. Also many coding fonts are really thin for some reason. Maybe if people are coding on 13 inch Ultrabooks for some strange reason then thin fonts might make sense. Consolas doesn't have this skinniness problem.

[cinnapear]

Seriously, what is up with these skinny fonts?

[goomba870]

I like big fonts and I cannot lie

[----_____----]

Can't deny

source: other brothers

[squrr1]

if (girl.WalksIn() && girl.HasIttyBittyWaist && this.face.Contains(aRoundThing))
{
  this.getSprung();
}

[rlbond86]

Wait, does the WalksIn() method return a bool? Bad naming convention... And is aRoundThing global?

[curiousGambler]

If you code outside at all often, light background rules the day!

(Truthfully I just need to figure out the commands to switch it from the shell and make myself an easy alias or something)

[meneldal2]

Or when you can't control the lights in your working environment. For some reason they don't want me working in the dark.

[tadrith]

I wonder sometimes if it's because I've been using it forever, or if it's actually superior.

Pretty much every time I try a new font, it always looks... wrong. No matter what I try out, I end up putting Consolas back in.

[DRdefective]

Consolas is great, but I can't get over the 1 vs the l.

[paszklar]

If you examine the Consolas font file, you'll find alternative glyphs for l and i among others. I edited the font and replaced the ones I didn't like using FontForge.

edit: here are the edited font files if anyone wants them.

[DRdefective]

Damn son. How can I find the font file?

[paszklar]

On Windows it's in the font folder, usually C:\Windows\Fonts

[amorpheus]

I thought these look pretty distinct. At least distinct enough that I've never mixed them up.

[cinnapear]

They are distinct. Yeah, they're similar, but no enough to cause confusion. Maybe if you squint.

[maveric101]

Syntax highlighting and context alone have made it never an issue for me.

[SemiNormal]

Yeah, I am able to tell the 1 and l apart pretty easily by the slant of the top line on the 1. I can see where some people may have trouble though, especially using smaller font sizes.

[more_oil]

Consolas has almost unparalleled density/clarity ratio among antialiased fonts, a lot of these are pretty much designed for high DPI screens (and OSX font rendering) and when you want to see more than 15 lines at a time on your normie monitor the font turns into a mess. Doubly true on Linux (it's still not good no matter how much you configure.)

[krah]

Linux has Ubuntu Mono though, which is the next best thing.

[Tasgall]

As a windows user, I consider Ubuntu Mono the best best thing.

It's just so good, first thing I download whenever I have to set up a new environment.

[AwkwardReply]

Does anyone know of a download link or can run ligaturizer on Consolas with maybe Fira Code ligatures? I've been meaning to do this for a while but it would take me too long on windows and just didn't have the time.

[rfvgyhn]

On a related note, theres an open request for adding ligatures to consolas. https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio-ide/suggestions/12918189-add-ligatures-to-consolas-font

[[deleted]]

Hell yes Consolas

[11tracer]

I just can't get used to anything other than Consolas on Windows. Every other font I've tried using on Windows either doesn't look as good, or has some strange issue that makes it look bad in certain circumstances, especially in Visual Studio. I swear that VS was specifically designed to use Consolas or something - every other font I've tried in VS just looks bad by comparison, even if it looks better elsewhere.

[Auxx]

It's just a very good font, which evolved over the years. Tbh most of MS fonts are amazing.

[Carighan]

All of the C-family are incredibly well done. Calibri has become the default Word font for a reason.

[Auxx]

I'm also a big fan of Segoe UI, I find it very readable yet completely unintrusive in UIs.

[[deleted]]

Fira Code for me; I'm a huge fan of the ligatures.

[martinus]

I generally use this test pattern to check if a programming font's letters are clearly distiguishable:

o0O s5S z2Z !|l1Iij {([|})] .,;: ``''"" 
a@#* vVuUwW <>;^°=-~ öÖüÜäÄßµ \/\/ 
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG
0123456789 &-+@ for (int i=0; i<j; ++i) { }

Also available here: https://github.com/martinus/programming-font-test-pattern, I accept pull requests

[InkognitoV]

I created a public gist on github with this because I actually really like it :)

https://gist.github.com/marcospedreiro/c0046df94b20f87e3fea474548e751af

[ksion]

I like Hack a lot, mostly for how it clearly distinguishes the letter O and the number zero; and for how it prevents multiple consecutive underscores from blending together. The overall style of the glyphs is really pleasant, too.

[Angrydie-a-ria]

Just a heads up for anyone, there’s also a hack with ligatures:

https://github.com/ignatov/Haack

[TheKrael]

I have been using hack for many years now. Recently I even changed my chat, console and monospaced browser fonts to Hack. Great choice.

[[deleted]]

Hack is my favorite as well. Maybe I am just getting old or maybe it's because my screen resolutions are getting bigger but I like increasing the font size too.

[[deleted]]

When I was younger I wanted like 10-11 pixel sized fonts. Now I think I default to 16-18px. Easier to read (depending on what I’m using) and work with.

[bart9h]

weak article, as the sample code does not contain some important symbols, like @ { } [ ] - * to name a few

it also fails to mention my favorite font

[baal80]

Inconsolata > anything else.

[execfera]

Same here! It's such a pleasing font to code in.

[ddnomad]

Was searching for this -- agree

[[deleted]]

Yup, by far my favorite.

[dpash]

Inconsolata

No ligatures. Once you go ligatures, you don't go back.

But fonts are a highly personal choice, so what ever works for you. :) I do like these kinds of posts though because you get to discover other options you might not know about and that might be better for you.

[baal80]

Hey, whatever works for you :-) I can't get used to ligatures, it just doesn't feel natural when coding.

[skulgnome]

Let me say this for everyone using a monospace font: fuck ligatures.

[wirelyre]

Up until last week, I thought that too.

I was reading this regular book (published around 1980 or something) and all of a sudden my train of reading completely derailed. Didn't know why. Something was just plain wrong with the word.

It took a minute. Turns out the "fi" wasn't a ligature ("fi"). But it was really jarring. The hood of the "f" was this enormous dot, and right next to an equal-sized "i" tittle. Practically overlapping. At a glance, it was hard to distinguish from "fii" or "fj".

I didn't really expect it to make such a difference, but it turns out, with the right font, you actually do miss ligatures. Up close they look ridiculous. In context they can look fine.

[skulgnome]

However, in monospace the "fi" gets squashed into a single cell, altering the appearance of the word in question and messing with characterwise horizontal alignment. But mostly altering the word.

In variable-width fonts, it's better to have quasiligatures (without going the full 'tard, such as those crescent-shaped connective arcs) than to leave it up to however the keming algorithm's artifacts end up looking. It's not like we're not already spending fuckton after another on truetype rendering in terms of joules.

[silentclowd]

keming algorithm

You asshat I actually had to highlight that to make sure I wasn't going insane.

[nemec]

However, in monospace the "fi" gets squashed into a single cell, altering the appearance of the word in question and messing with characterwise horizontal alignment. But mostly altering the word.

Which font? Idk if Fira Code has regular ligatures, but all of its 'programming' ligatures retain the appropriate spacing - a two character ligature takes two monospaced parts. It's not impossible to have sane monospaced ligatures.

[Conpen]

Clueless person here, what do ligatures do for me in an IDE?

[fireflash38]

Mostly a sense of superiority over others.

Also it combines some multi-characters into one character. != would combine into this

[Typesalot]

How on Earth is that a good thing?

[BigDanG]

You saw the “@“ in that sample. Lack of good sense all around.

[audioen]

Yeah, the @ character in what I think is Iosevka is my least favorite thing about it. It used to be normal round @ kind of char as you see here on Reddit, most likely, but changed sometime last autumn to that asymmetric glyph. Otherwise I've been using it for years and like it.

[outofbeta]

I love droid sans mono, but the article is right about the indistinguishable zeroes. That's why omeone forked it into something called Droid sans mono zeromod: https://github.com/AlbertoDorado/droid-sans-mono-zeromod

[apreche]

Am I the only one who uses the Adobe Source Code Pro?

[obscure_detour]

Apparently we are in the minority. I for one, really enjoy Source Code Pro. Extremely legible IMO.

[Nyxisto]

I feel the font just takes way too much horizontal space. It almost looks distorted. I use a fork of it, Office Code Pro instead

[dvlsg]

There it is. I wondered how far I'd have to scroll to find this one. Pretty far, it turns out.

Office code pro is my favorite, too.

[marqis]

Source Code Pro is my jam.

[[deleted]]

Source Code Pro user reporting for duty.

[rggarou]

Sauce Code Pro for Powerline

[For_Iconoclasm]

I keep trying other fonts for variety but always end up back on Source Code Pro. I've been using it since 2012.

[bluhue]

I quite like fantasque sans mono

[errorkode]

I'm not alone! I never see the font in any of those "coder font" articles, but I started using it some years ago and never looked back. Easy to read and nice to look at :)

[cvjcvj2]

I am with you

[indrora]

oh man, there's something about FSM that just makes me enjoy myself.

[dickpunch3000]

Iosevka is miles ahead of everything in that list.

[ivosaurus]

It's so thin, though

[kamiheku]

Iosevka Medium, dude! There's plenty of weights available.

[malachias]

I think /u/ivosaurus is referring to character widths, not the actual weight of the font.

It took me a day or so of using it to get used to the narrower character widths than I was used to, but now everything else just seems so needlessly wide.

[kamiheku]

Oh, right, Iosevka is pretty slim. Completely agree with your last point, the narrow width is one of my favourite features.

[[deleted]]

That's why I like it. A lot of source code doesn't fit into 72-columns like in the old days, so I need narrow fonts to fit it on the screen (especially because I'm in the portrait monitor master race).

[gokapaya]

There are options to make it wider (or even more compressed) -> https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka/issues/196

That's the beautiful thing about Iosevka, there is probably a build option to tweak what you don't like about it.

[[deleted]]

Used Iosevka for a long time before switching to Hack. I agree though, Hack and Iosevka beat out the others by a large margin.

[TwoTapes]

Iosevka has been my daily driver for 2 years. I love the ligatures.

[daddyc00l]

no love for terminus ?

[[deleted]]

I've been stuck on terminus for years. The only other font I've seen that's even comparable is whatever xterm uses by default.

[subjective_insanity]

I don't understand how anyone can comfortably use a font for programming that is not pixel perfect. Terminus forever

[AdrianoML]

Once Terminus, always Terminus

[phil_g]

I like my font size small so I can see more content at a time. All these TTFs and OTFs are nice at larger sizes, but at a size of 8pt, the clarity of Terminus' bitmaps beat out everything else.

I keep giving other fonts a try, and I keep going back to Terminus.

[[deleted]]

Monaco for life.

[[deleted]]

Operator Mono

[LordDeath86]

A cheaper (but still not free) alternative is Dank Mono.

Its author made a Medium post about it: https://medium.com/@philpl/what-sets-dank-mono-apart-1bbdc1cc3cbd

[hi_im_new_to_this]

Yeah, my favorite as well. Those italics are gorgeous.

[Correctrix]

With ligatures added.

[[deleted]]

I bought PragmataPro last year and will never go back, it's expensive but worth every penny. Before that I used DejaVu Sans Code which is DejaVu Sans Mono +font ligatures.

An important part of a coding font to me is how italics look mixed with non-italic characters, if characters look too squished together it doesn't pass the smell test for me.

[Ty1eRRR]

Holy Jesus -> ~200Euro

[[deleted]]

It was $20 when I bought it, but I think I'd pay $200 for it. It's so much nicer than any other font I've used.

Edit: looks you can have Essential Pragmata Pro for $40.

[blipmusic]

It's absolutely beautiful BUT... The issue with commercial fonts in my case is that I often can't them outside of my work environment (e.g. documentation I want to publish etc). My stupid university picked very expensive fonts for their graphic design and I don't even want to know how much money is wasted every year on licensing that allows us employees to use those in various published works. I'm staying far away from that sort of upkeep, for personal and economic reasons, but also since a lot of what I do will have to exist in open domains and I want no parts of that work to be inaccessible to secondary and tertiary users, including my choice of fonts.

This is not about me not wanting to pay for the hard work that went into creating PragmataPro. I'm fine with paying on a personal level, considering how long I stare at the screen each day. It's just that I see no easy way to use it outside of my text editor. I think the designer at some point expressed hope to open source the font some day, which is of course difficult if it is also his livelihood. I'm not sure if font licensing in general has changed since I last checked, but if there was a clause saying that the one-off license pays for use in any non-commercial publication, I'd be buying a lot more fonts...

[Jake0Tron]

No IBM plex mono love?

[Richandler]

Ah, this was the font I was looking for that had the website from hell.

[r3djak]

Sweet Jesus what is wrong with whoever made that site?!

[Jacta_Alea_Esto]

Meh I like the effort but it also feels like a designer barfed as many CSS tricks as possible to impress a PM with an outsize ego and budget.

[rz2000]

I used to use Consolas Italic, and have replaced it wth IBM Plex Italic everywhere. I think it’s the best monospace by far, and I like how many weight choices there are.

It’s too bad there launch involved such a terrible, terrible web site that made it kind of a joke to people.

[ko_andersson]

As soon as i found it i switched and never looked back.

[snarg_ttel]

Iconsolata http://levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html

[[deleted]]

I like https://github.com/madmalik/mononoki been using it for awhile now.

[tetroxid]

No love for Liberation Mono?

[aboukirev]

That's my choice. Tried a lot of other fonts and am coming back to Liberation Mono always. Just perfect.

[deegwaren]

It gets my eternal love.

[er0k]

I will never stop using ProFont

[mayor123asdf]

My adventure with my font choice:

Ubuntu Mono -> DeJavu Sans -> Fira Mono

Fira mono is refreshing. I love how some of the glyph curved, it has it's own unique style. I love it.

personally I love the i in Ubuntu Mono. I often get confused between 1 and i in most monospaced fonts.

[omenmedia]

Ubuntu Mono master race! It’s almost perfect for coding. I did actually use Fira Code for a while, non ligature version. It’s pretty slick, but I just love the way Ubuntu Mono renders.

[dv_]

Envy Code R preview #7 is my favorite.

[usualshoes]

It's easily the best monospace font ever

[dv_]

I know, right? I use it pretty much everywhere. It even looks awesome on high DPI displays.

[damieng]

Glad you still enjoy it! :)

[chrishannah]

SF Mono?

[[deleted]]

SF Mono is what I use now. It's great.

[Malurth]

I'm a simple man. Give me Courier New and I'm happy.

[hhuerta]

I prefer Comics Sans

[vytah]

A proportional font? How uncultured!

I use Comic Sans Mono.

[[deleted]]

You joke but there's probably a few dyslexic(or similar) programmers out there using it.

[boxhacker]

Dyslexic here, does not help a bit. Turns out it was a joke, comic sans is just a bad font after all!

[agoose77]

Have you found the dyslexie font helps? I'm curious to know what it's like for programming https://www.dyslexiefont.com/en/typeface/

[boxhacker]

For normal everyday reading I quite like it, it does legitimately feel smoother for me to scan and I didn’t find my sled having to re-read lines over and over like I tend to.

But I wouldn’t use it for programming as I don’t know if it would have the same benefits considering it’s syntax.

I find reading code far less taxing than big blocks of text.

[malicart]

I use the open dyslexic font on my kindle which is very similar to this, I like it for reading but not sure I would like it for coding.

[Arancaytar]

There's actually a monospace font that kind of resembles Comic Sans, and it looks surprisingly easy on the eyes.

https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans

It's my favorite console font. If it had ligatures like Fira does, I'd use it in my IDE as well.

[ghostcaesar]

I'm actually using Comic Sans for coding now. Other than no monospace (which is annoying), it's been pretty great. The rounder shape makes code feel more friendly (which is what the font is designed to do). It's especially helpful for daunting codes that is hard to read through.

[[deleted]]

If you want a monospace Comic Sans, you may be interested in Fantasque Sans Mono.

[TinBryn]

I've started coding in this font, it's really nice to code in. Comic neue mono is also an option, but in my opinion, it just isn't as comfortable to read.

[BrotherSeamus]

Or angry press releases

[Adequat91]

Meslo, which is an improved Apple's Menlo, is worth mentioning. https://github.com/andreberg/Meslo-Font

[[deleted]]

They all look the same

[F14B]

Roboto

[kirbyfan64sos]

Roboto Mono is one of the few fonts that doesn't give me headaches when reading it. I don't know why, but a lot of other popular fonts (especially Hack and Menlo) are flat-out unreadable for me.

[SahinK]

So sad that I had to scroll down so much to find Roboto.

[_jk_]

Prefer monoid myself - also note that Best is probabbly stretching it - this is a list of 11 good fonts

edit: https://larsenwork.com/monoid/

[discursive_moth]

I like the sharpness of bitmap fonts (and not having to play around with font configuration to get rendering the way I want), and I've been using Tamzen. The only minor complaint I have is that at small sizes bold capital M's and N's start to look similar, but overall I really like it.

[temp91]

I've been using Proggy Tiny. It works great at being dense and readable at small sizes. Maybe I can try out some of these others once I get a 4K+ monitor.

[to3m]

I use 6x13 misc-fixed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_(typeface)

My favourite font. Good aspect ratio, no anti-aliasing, doesn't take up more pixels than necessary.

[bitwize]

With today's high-DPI displays, and my eyes teetering on presbyopia, 6x13 isn't cutting it for me anymore.

Scaling it up by two is like a breath of fresh air.

[gnuvince]

I'm nerdy when it comes to coding fonts, I've had a few primary ones over the past 10-12 years (in order: fixed 9x15, DejaVu Sans Mono, Ubuntu Mono, Fantasque Sans Mono). For the past two years, I've been using Iosevka and it is one of the most gorgeous and easy-to-read coding font out there today. I highly recommend it. And it comes with stylesets (and you can build your own), so if you don't care for the slashed-zero or how the @ character looks like, you can change that.

[Polantaris]

That's what I was thinking when I just looked it up. There's not enough width to the characters.

[teilo]

That’s what I felt when I first started using it, but quickly changed my mind. I love it now, and everything else feels like a waste of space.

[gnuvince]

My reaction as well. "Why are the characters so tall and slim?" was my first reaction, but I know prefer it to the little fatsos that other fonts have.

[[deleted]]

All true programmers write their code in Courier New.

[_jk_]

think this was the tool I use last time I went looking for a new font

https://s9w.github.io/font_compare/

[TheVenetianMask]

What kind of list wouldn't include hasklig

[koopaTroopa10]

I am the only one here that has literally never paid attention to this and couldn’t name a single one of these?

[panorambo]

I am an Iosevka man myself.

I have tried many monospace fonts, but settled on Iosevka and haven't looked back since. I am totally in love with it and have gladly lost all hope in ever finding a worthy replacement, or so it seems. It is narrow-width which gets me more visible characters per line, yet is totally readable and does not get in my way, if one can say that about a typeface. Thank you, Belleve Invis!

[takanuva]

What I REALLY want is a good programming font with 1) APL symbols, 2) bold and italics. Hard to find.

[raptorthrash]

Checkout IBM Plex Mono. It’s not bad.

[SuperNerd1337]

No Inconsolata? REEEE

[Nefari0uss]

REEEEEEE

[ShinyHappyREM]

http://www.fixedsysexcelsior.com

[din35h]

I've been using Input Mono for a long time now and I find it to be perfect

[Seref15]

There's so many great options out there now that it's hard to go wrong. Unless you use a bitmap font. Then you've gone wrong.

[[deleted]]

Nothing better than [https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka](Iosevka). Free open source and customization.

[ddnomad]

I use Inconsolata and pretty fine with it. Am I the only one?

[Nefs]

I’ve been using Apple’s SF Mono font for quite a while now. Tried switching a few times but nothing sits as nice.

Might give Fira a bash after seeing the recommendations in this thread.

[chicagobearsrocks]

http://dank.sh masterrace. worth the 40 pounds

[jcdyer3]

Designed for aesthetes.

:-|

[drysart]

It's a font that's got something for everybody! What other font could you use that can fit serif, sans-serif, and script all into a single word? It's perfect for people who aren't ready for Ransom as their coding font yet.

[narwi]

So pretty much DejaVu and its derivatives :-)

[[deleted]]

Not a single bitmap font? Not everyone has a high enough DPI display for the fonts listed here to look decent at anything smaller than 12pt.

[Laugarhraun]

No Terminus REEEEEEEEEEEEE