What are the best monospace programming fonts with ligatures?

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score 142 · Accepted Answer

Fira Code

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Top Pro

Many ligatures supported

Quite a few compared to some of the other fonts that support ligatures. See More

Top Con

Lowercase 'r' looks off

The r is the only character with serifs, and makes it look out of place and distracting. See More

TranquilBeaivi's Experience

Specs

Top Pro

Works in any editor that supports ligatures

Such as JetBrains, Visual Studio, Visual Code, and Linqpad. See More

Top Con

No italics

There is no italic variant as of April 7, 2017. See More

RobustZaqar's Experience

It is obvious that this artist knows developers. Open Source license and available on GitHub. Beautiful contact sheet style infographic of features shows attention to detail. See More

Top Pro

Supports Retina displays

Fira Coda supports high pixel density Retina displays. See More

Top Con

Too wide. Too large line height.

Nicholas Valentine's Experience

It is easily readable and looks beautiful, regardless of its size, which can greatly enhance one's overall programming experience. See More

Top Pro

Characters look really nice

Some characters that look odd in other monospace fonts look very nice in Fira Code: @, a, lower-case-L, Q, j, and *. See More

Top Con

The '@' Symbol is asymmetric

It's a style, but it would be nice if it would wrap and not just cover the top. See More

ResourcefulHapi's Experience

The @ symbol is ugly See More

Top Pro

Has ligatures

This is particularly beneficial for those who wish to use combined letters such as "æ" and other diphthongs. But when it comes to programming, the ability to scan through your code is improved with ligatures for equality, arrow functions, and more. See More

Top Con

Noisy serif-like style harming the text clarity

PatientNortia's Experience

The best. I'll never return to another font. See More

Top Pro

Good editor support

A list of supported editors and terminals can be found here. See More

Top Con

Ligatures like == and === are harder to tell apart than they should be

Big Kahuna Burger's Experience

Works with my both editors. VS, VSCode. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

This font is licensed under the SIL Open Font License. See More

Top Con

Some ligatures will never be implemented

Because FiraCode aims to be language-agnostic, character combinations that perform different actions in different languages are not implemented. One such character combination is /= that is an inequality operator in languages like Erlang and Haskell, while it means divide and assign in C. (Note: Also listed as a PRO because seeing ≠ in a C program where you're dividing and assigning could be confusing.) See More

Top Pro

Frequent updates

The repository is frequently updated. See More

Top Con

Ligatures are nice-looking but harm clarity

Even though the font combines characters into ligatures, you still need to type the normal characters, and the ligatures make that difficult in many cases. See More

Top Pro

Installs easily on Mac

Many ligature fonts on Github aren't "mac ready". This font comes pre-compiled and ready to install on Windows, Mac, and Linux. See More

Top Pro

Has a slashed zero

New style since February 2018. See More

Top Pro

Supports retina displays

Fira Coda supports high pixel density retina displays. See More

Top Pro

Language-agnostic

Does not implement ligatures for character combinations that do different things in different languages. For example, a Haskell specific ligature for /= is to combine the characters into ≠ because in Haskell it means inequality, however this would be confusing in C as C treats /= as divide and assign. (Note: Also listed as a CON because this means that ligatures that some people may want will never be implemented.) See More

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The Best 1 of 9 OptionsWhy?

My Recommendation for Fira Code

My Recommendation for Fira Code

Many ligatures supported

Lowercase 'r' looks off

Works in any editor that supports ligatures

No italics

Supports Retina displays

Too wide. Too large line height.

Characters look really nice

The '@' Symbol is asymmetric

Has ligatures

Noisy serif-like style harming the text clarity

Good editor support

Ligatures like == and === are harder to tell apart than they should be

Free and open source

Some ligatures will never be implemented

Frequent updates

Ligatures are nice-looking but harm clarity

Installs easily on Mac

Has a slashed zero

Supports retina displays

Language-agnostic

8 Other Options Considered

My Recommendation for Hasklig

My Recommendation for Hasklig

Has a heavier appearance than Fira Code or Monoid.

Lacks !=

Has many variants such as Italic, Bold Italic, Light, Semibold, etc., etc.

Has a heavier appearance than Fira Code or Monoid

Great for Haskell

No support for many editors, including emacs

Completely free and open source

Very cute but not WYSIWYG

My Recommendation for Iosevka

My Recommendation for Iosevka

Readable

Not very readable at small sizes

Over 2000 Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, phonetic and PowerLine glyphs

Looks bad when used as a terminal font

Several styles available

Fewer ligatures than other fonts

Large number of weights

Free and open source

Well-maintained

Narrow

Easy on user's eyes

Can be customized

Good CJK compatibility

IPA support

My Recommendation for Victor Mono

My Recommendation for Victor Mono

Is free

Opentail lowercase 'g'

Has ligatures

Has both an oblique and italic style

Has a large x-height, making it legible at small sizes

Comes in multiple weights

My Recommendation for PragmataPro

My Recommendation for PragmataPro

Not free

Responsive author, frequent updates

Very narrow

7000+ glyphs

"==" and "===" are not implemented

Has ligatures

Lowercase L looks like a number 1

Narrow width saves a lot of space

Comprehensive Unicode character support

Very clear and legible

My Recommendation for Monoid

My Recommendation for Monoid

Looks a bit cramped and narrow

Makes the code very easy to read

"!==" looks like strikethrough equal and another equal

Novel use of ligatures to display ascii character combinations as symbols

Great set of ligatures

Sharpness

My Recommendation for Ligaturizer

My Recommendation for Ligaturizer