Fira Code: monospaced font with programming ligatures

Problem

Programmers use a lot of symbols, often encoded with several characters. For human brain sequences like ->, <= or := are single logical token, even if they take two or three places on the screen. Your eye spends non-zero amount of energy to scan, parse and join multiple characters into a single logical one. Ideally, all programming languages should be designed with full-fledged Unicode symbols for operators, but that’s not the case yet.

Solution

Download Fira Code v1.101 | Follow updates 📢 @FiraCode

Fira Code is a Fira Mono font extended with a set of ligatures for common programming multi-character combinations. This is just a font rendering feature: underlying code remains ASCII-compatible. This helps to read and understand code faster. For some frequent sequences like .. or // ligatures allow us to correct spacing.

Terminals support

Work	Don’t work
Terminal.app (OS X default terminal)	iTerm 2 (feature request)
Konsole (except KDE4)	GNOME Terminal
Termux (Android terminal emulator)	rxvt

Editor support

Work	Don’t work
Atom 1.1 or newer (instructions)	SublimeText (vote here)
Xcode (with this plugin)	Intellij Idea-based (vote here)
Visual Studio	Visual Studio Code (issue)
TextMate 2	Standalone Emacs (workaround)
MacVim 7.4 or newer (instructions)	gVim
Coda 2	Notepad++
Eclipse (Linux)	Eclipse (Mac and Win, vote here)
QtCreator	Xamarin Studio/Monodevelop
LightTable (instructions)
BBEdit (instructions)
RStudio
Chocolat
Kate, KWrite (except KDE 4)
Mancy
TextAdept (Linux, Mac)
GNOME Builder
Leafpad
Notepad (Win)
Probably work: Geany, gEdit, Smultron, Vico

Browser support

• IE 10+, Edge: enable with font-feature-settings: "calt" 1;
• Firefox
• Safari
• Chromium-based browsers: enable with font-variant-ligatures: contextual; or text-rendering: optimizeLegibility (see 571246)
• ACE
• CodeMirror

Code examples

Ruby:

JavaScript:

Erlang:

Go:

Haskell:

Alternatives

Another monospaced fonts with ligatures:

• Hasklig (free)
• PragmataPro (€59)
• Monoid (free)

Credits

This work is based on OFL-licensed Fira Mono font. Original Fira Mono font was not changed, only extended.

Fira Code was inspired by Hasklig font: Ligatures for Haskell code.

Thanks Georg Seifert for providing a Glyphs 2 license.

Changelog

1.101

• Added Light weight
• Adjusted rules when vertical centering of :, -, * and + occurs

1.100

• Fixed calt table conflicts (---- would incorrectly render as <!--)
• Added centered : (between digits, e.g. 10:40)
• Added lowercase-aligned -, * and + (only between lowercase letters, e.g. kebab case var-name, pointers *ptr etc)

1.000

Added weights:

• Retina (just slightly heavier than Regular)
• Medium
• Bold

Switched to calt instead of liga. You can now “step inside” the ligature in text editors.

Fira Code is now drawn and built in Glyps 2 app (should improve compatibility).

Added:

<-> <~~ <~ ~~~ ~> ~~>
<$ <+ <* *> +> $>
;;; ::: !!! ??? %% %%% ## ### ####
.- #_( =< **/ 0x www []

Redrawn:

{- -} ~= =~ =<< >>= <$> <=> .=

Removed: ?:

Total ligatures count: 115

0.6

Redrawn from Fira Mono 3.204 (slightly heavier weight)

Added:

** *** +++ -- --- ?:
/= /== .= ^= =~ ?= ||= |=
<<< <=< -<< -< >- >>- >=> >>>
<*> <|> <$> <+>
<!-- {- -} /** \\ \\\ ..< ?? ||| &&& <| |>

Added support for Powerline

0.5

Added: #{ ~- -~ <== ==> /// ;; </

0.4

• Added ~= ~~ #[
• Rolled back && and || to more traditional look
• === and !== are now rendered with 3 horisontal bars

0.3

Added: ~@ #? =:= =<

0.2.1

Fixed width of && and ||

0.2

Added: --> <-- && || =>> =/=

0.1

>>= =<< <<= ->> -> => <<- <-
=== == <=> >= <= >> << !== != <>
:= ++ #( #_
:: ... .. !! // /* */ />