Ask HN: What is your default font for coding and terminal? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your default font for coding and terminal?

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Recently I saw that there is a thread with some comments on fonts, specially monospaced fonts. I discovered that there are fonts to buy (had no idea about it) and on top of I discovered few of the fonts that some HNers pointed out.

If you are using a special font for the terminal and your IDE, please share some details :)

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JetBrains Mono! Used to use Roboto Mono, because I liked how close it was to a standard sans-serif font, but JB Mono is similarly spaced and has the advantage of built-in ligatures and such.

Genuine question: What's the appeal of ligatures?

I never got the point. I want to see exactly what's in the document. With ligatures I have to translate what I see back to what I get. It seems like unnecessary cognitive load to me.

Wow JBM is very nice, love ligatures and it's so easy to read. Thanks for mentioning it.

Also, JBM is available almost everywhere, e.g. it comes with several mobile apps.

Iosevka Term Regular

https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka

Iosevka is delightful once you get used to its density. I use a custom build of Iosevka with cues from Atkison Hyperlegible[1] that works really well even at tiny font sizes.

[1]: https://brailleinstitute.org/freefont

I love that Iosevka is narrow (fitting more code panes on my screen) yet still makes all the glyphs clearly distinct.

Personal thanks: in search of more horizontal space I installed it, and it does the trick nicely. I installed the "fixed" variant because I don’t want ligatures in the terminal.

This is a sophisticated font with many variants, stylistic options, and compendious Unicode coverage.

I switched to Iosevka after I started learning Japanese, because the exact 1:2 aspect ratio of Latin characters means that square-shaped CJK characters align perfectly with the monospace grid.

Gosh, this is my favourite too!

I've been using FiraCode for a year or so and like it pretty well https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode

ditto. One of the first things installed when I get a new devbox now.

I've been using JetBrains Mono recently, switching over from SF Mono on MacOS and Fira Code on Windows. SF Mono looks great and Fira Code has nice ligatures, but JBM has the best of both and a really nice shape.

https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/

Cascadia Mono/Code, depending if I feel like having ligatures:

https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code

It has the option to enable cursive italics, which is disabled by default. Been using it for over a year. No complaints.

Iosevka: https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka

Another vote for Iosevka.

I learned about it here on HN. It is great because it is narrow but very clear and easy to read (and free). I like narrow because I like to use side-by-side panels in VSCode, so it fits more characters per line for readable font sizes. Incredible font.

I love it even for film subtitles. Easy to read and not too much "technical" as other mono fonts.

Grumpy curmudgeon here still using DejaVu (and it's Vera Sans ancestor before that). I'm sure there's lots of good choices, but DejaVu is great, it's everywhere and it's free. Just don't see a lot of value in shopping around.

Me too! DejaVuSansMono Nerd Font and when I want serifs, GoMono Nerd Font.

I used to spend a lot of time fiddling with visual properties of my desktop in the past.

Nowadays I just install Xubuntu, add i3 and mostly use it as it is. So the terminal happens to be white on black and the Emacs black on white. I don't think about it, but apply the rule they give for healthier sitting: The next position is the healthiest one (meaning switch often).

I don't even know whether my terminal and my Emacs (main tools besides the browser) use the same font or not. Why would that interest me as long as I can read both? Sometimes when something has changed on a new installation (UI people want to do continuous improvement...) it might look ugly at first. After 3 days I don't notice it anymore. Hardly ever that I would spend any time to change it back as it has always been.

If you present online (other than slides) you should know the shortcuts to change the fontsize. And possibly change your cursor and selection color to make them recognizable for remote attendees.

So which font do you use?

I wrote I don't know. Whatever was there by the installation procedure described. (I am at sick leave at the moment. The PC is off not to hinder recovery. The phone is on to raise the feeling...).

I you are still reading this. I booted my PC and checked.

Terminal font says DejaVu Sans Mono Book.

Emacs says DejaVu Sans Mono.

I don't know how this font lookup works and I don't want to spend my time on investigating, I guess both use /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSansMono.ttf

I like using IBM Plex Mono. https://github.com/IBM/plex • https://www.ibm.com/plex/

Julia Mono: https://juliamono.netlify.app/

By far the best monospaced font I have seen, discovered on HN. Before that, I used Ligconsolata (Inconsolata with ligatures).

Hack. Both in Sublime Text and urxvt terminals. And as a i3 system font. And as a fixed font for Firefox and Thunderbird.

I'm forking envypn[0] to make some characters more recognizable or just give them some personality (a and g, for example), and doing a slanted version. Slow process since I'm not using any graphical editor whatsoever but editing it "by hand". Hope to release it soon though.

[0] https://github.com/hicolour/envypn-font

For IDEs and text editors, I use Dank Mono[0] 14pt.

On my personal machine, my terminal font is Cozette[1] 13pt, while on my company machine it's Dank Mono[0] 14pt.

In the past I've also used SF Mono[2], Fira Code[3] and Anonymous Pro[4] among others.

[0]: https://philpl.gumroad.com/l/dank-mono [1]: https://github.com/slavfox/Cozette [2]: https://developer.apple.com/fonts/ [3]: https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode [4]: https://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-pro

I cannot stand the trend for the cursive s in programming fonts, but maybe I'm just boomin'

These days, I use Comic Code for coding and JetBrainsMono for the terminal.

https://tosche.net/fonts/comic-code

https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/

PragmataPro.

https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/

Modularly spaced and monospaced; true bolds and italics; ligatures. It is more condensed than most system fonts.

The full set is €199, and I've found it worth it. You can buy individual fonts too.

Quinze https://www.programmingfonts.org/#quinze

I was on a quest to find the narrowest font and Quinze was the answer. It's something like 20% narrower than Iosevka, which is already quite narrow. I love Iosevka but to me nothing beats maximizing the area of the characters (readability) while minimizing their width (fitting more characters on a line). That means sacrificing the number of lines on the screen, which I solve by splitting when needed.

In fact this font is so narrow that when I attempted to force its use in all monospace text in the browser, readability took a hit instead of improving. This is because at the same height Quinze is much smaller than "normal" fonts. In my coding setup I use a huge font size so it's no problem.

I've tried a lot of different monospaced fonts, but I've settled on these 3:

IDE:

• Cascadia Mono - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/cascadia-c...

• CaskaydiaCove Nerd Font (as a fallback) - https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/tree/master/patched-...

Terminal:

• Hack Nerd Font - https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/tree/master/patched-...

I also use Hack Nerd Font.

I used the Terminus bitmap font until a year ago because I found it really clear and sharp even on small sizes. Since bitmap fonts are not that well supported anymore, I switched to JetBrains Mono for both terminal and IDE. I started using JetBrains Mono in my IDEs as soon as it came out.

I migrated from Terminus to Iosevka Regular Mono for the same reason.

For many years, Terminus was kicking the ass for Mac and Windows users that watched over my shoulder ;-)

Fira Code with ligatures

    brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts
    brew install --cask font-fira-code

Deja Vu Sans Mono

I've tried many but that one is just unbeatable.

My default font is ”whatever they have selected as default”. I’m not nearly competent enough as an UI designer to pick better fonts than the person working for Apple / Microsoft / Jetbrains. I trust their judgement.

Terminal: Courier

Xcode (Code editor): Victor Mono Regular (Heard about it here): https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/

I use Victor Mono too. I like the compact spacing in this font. It works well when I increase my editor font size when sharing screen with my colleagues.

I like the ligatures (<=, !=, etc.).

Hack (https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/) in editor, and Monospace Regular in terminal.

Source code pro: https://adobe-fonts.github.io/source-code-pro/

I use the "Sauce Code Pro" variant which includes a bunch of glyphs: https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/tree/master/patched-...

Similarly, the Hasklig font is just Source Code Pro with ligatures.

Iosevka with Nerd Fonts patched.

InconsolotaGo NF for Terminals and Consolas for IDE

I use HackGen35 Console it's a composite of Hack and GenJyuu-Gothic. It has a brew cask.

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask-fonts/blob/master/...

My eyesight isn't so hot because of chronic shingles in my left eye. On a 13" 2015 MBP: SF Mono Medium 18pt, antialias disabled, Use bold fonts enabled. Light beige text on a chalkboard green background. Character spacing .911, line spacing 1. Took a bit of experimenting to settle on this but has been great.

I use Input sans condensed for all programming languages because I prefer non squeezed display for wide characters, except for Go lang, which I used Input mono condensed instead since the auto formatter use space as comments offsets

https://input.djr.com/

B 612 because it was designed for the cockpit of Airbus planes. Would feel even better if it wasn't a google font.

Uhh, it's available as TTF files from GitHub.

https://b612-font.com

Nouveau IBM

https://www.dafont.com/nouveau-ibm.font

Before that, I used Cousine. I probably still do in some places.

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Cousine

Verily Serif Mono (plus a few modifications). I find serif fonts much easier to read, and this one is the most non-monospace-like font I've ever found. (I've modified it to have a visually heavier semicolon and a visually lighter underscore, so my code is easier to read.)

SF Mono

Go Mono and also Iosevka (a fairly narrow font). I also historically used Bitstream Vera Sans, (and occasionally still do).

https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/go-mono

I currently use jetbrains font on vscode. It's quite good. The bold font-weight and font-size of 15 are the settings I use.

https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/

For VS Code: FiraCode with ligatures enabled (yes I'm one of those weirdos)

For the terminal: Inconsolata.

Big fan of both Inconsolata and Fira Code. If I'm not using one, I'm using the other as my default.

The only IDE I've every changed the default font in is Teradata SQL Assistant because the comma was one pixel different from the period and it would confuse me constantly. I'm always a little surprised people are so into coding fonts.

Victor Mono. I went through a bunch of fonts recently looking for that right fit and Victor ended that search nicely.

https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/

Super boring answer, but …

On Mac: the Apple one.

On PC: the VS Code one.

They are pleasant to look at. I never have l1I problems and I don’t think ligatures are appropriate in monospace scenarios as I find it quite important for me as a reader of code to know what each individual character is.

Dina Font, always Dina Font https://www.dcmembers.com/jibsen/download/61/

I'm just posting this for all of us who don't care one bit or are content with the defaults. :)

I know an ugly font when I see one, but whatever JetBrains IDEs, macOS' Terminal and Xcode use is fine by me.

Offtopic.

Something seems wrong with HN.

My newest comments don't show up under "threads".

And curiously when I click on "threads" my karma counter is a few points lower than when I click on a random comment thread.

(it works now)

Berekely Mono

https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono

Consolas looks good and is the default for VS code on Windows

DM Mono! https://fonts.google.com/specimen/DM+Mono

macOS, iTerm, Menlo

Menlo isn't the perfect font, but it's good enough and I wasted way too much time trying to find the perfect font. So to force myself from fiddling with fonts, I just stick with Menlo (This is also the same reason why I prefer macOS over Linux for my OS: forces me to fiddle less with customization because it has less).

JetBrains Mono is quite nice as well. I don't always switch it off when using JetBrains products.

> This is also the same reason why I prefer macOS over Linux for my OS: forces me to fiddle less with customization because it has less

Similar here, although it has more to do with the defaults on macOS being generally decent and needing less fiddling with. I can have a brand new Mac ready for productive work in half an hour tops without any maintenance of dotfile repos or config transfer. Fine tuning things to a fully preferred state takes a little longer, but it's not even remotely critical and can be pushed off until I have some downtime due to being blocked.

Agree. I know I use Menlo on macOS but I’ve never needed to change it. Same for Consolas when I used Windows, these fonts are just sane defaults.

On any Linux I tried, the default mono fonts were always so awful it would trigger my fiddling nerve. They’re either too wide or too thin or too round, they never seem to get the perfect balance of Menlo or Consolas

It's been improving in a lot of distros recently but it used to be that the default proportional font on most Linux distros was Vera Sans or DejaVu sans which always drove me nuts because of how wide the glyphs of those fonts are compared to just about any UI font used in commercial operating systems in the past two or three decades. It was enough of a peeve that when it came to Linux distros, I used to be inclined toward Ubuntu and Ubuntu variants for the simple fact that they had Ubuntu Sans, a much better UI font, preinstalled.

Huge fan of Ubuntu Mono (UbuntuMono Nerd Font Mono)

D2Coding by Naver, it's a narrow font but not looking crazy like other narrow fonts

Terminal: Alacritty Font: Envy Code R

A nice combination in Vim on my minimal Arch setup.

How does PragmataPro vs Iosevka compare?

I use Iosevka, but am curious about PragmataPro

I like the design and ideas of PragmataPro but it's too confusing for me. The $19 version seems very restricted but it's not clear enough what is missing. I use "Iosevka SS08" which has the narrowness that I love in Iosevka, and the SS08 version has some details from PragmataPro.

Iosevka was less legible at 14/16 but more at below 12 for me. I daily drive PragmataPro now

ProFontIIx for terminal, Source Code Pro for text editor.

Menlo or something that looks like it. I’m pretty boring.

I've been pretty happy with Fantasque Sans Mono.

Whatever the default Windows Terminal font is.

Monaco. I’m old.

Menlo on MacOS, Ubuntu Mono on Linux.

Hack font https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/

Thread closed

I use this font everywhere as well (alacritty, neovim, vscode, etc), I think I've been using it since it was first posted on HN maybe 7 years ago? It's a great font, especially with the differences between O, 0, l, L, I.

My eyesight is bad so I typically have large font sizes (24 for text, 22 for glyphs/icons). One thing I never want to do is "stress" my eyes by having a hard time reading.

One of those fonts that puts the 0 in 3270.

I settled on SF Mono long ago.

I usually switch between these:

- Consolas

- IBM Plex Mono

- Monaco

- Monofur

- Ubuntu Mono

- -*-clean-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-2

my terminal font is OCR-A gotta have that retro-tech style.

Courier 10 pitch

Source Code Pro

Fantasque Sans

Pragmata Pro

Comic Sans

Comic Mono

Iosevka

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