Fira Code: monospaced font with programming ligatures

Problem

Programmers use a lot of symbols, often encoded with several characters. For the human brain, sequences like ->, <= or := are single logical tokens, even if they take two or three characters on the screen. Your eye spends a 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 v1.200 | Read how to install | Follow updates @FiraCode

Fira Code is an extension of the Fira Mono font containing 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.

Terminal support

Works	Doesn’t work
Black Screen	Cmder
Butterfly	ConEmu
HyperTerm	GNOME Terminal
Konsole	iTerm 2 (coming in 3.1)
QTerminal	LXTerminal
Terminal.app (OS X default terminal)	mate-terminal
Termux (Android terminal emulator)	PuTTY

             | **rxvt**
             | **Terminator** ([bug report](https://bugs.launchpad.net/terminator/+bug/1604861))
             | **xfce4-terminal**

Editor support

Works	Doesn’t work
Anjuta (unless at the EOF)	Arduino IDE
AppCode (2016.2+, instructions)	Adobe Dreamweaver
Atom 1.1 or newer (instructions)	Eclipse (Mac and Win, vote here)
BBEdit (instructions)	Standalone Emacs (workaround)
Brackets (with this plugin)	gVim
Chocolat	IDLE
CLion (2016.2+, instructions)	KDevelop 4
Coda 2	Monkey Studio IDE
CodeLite	Notepad++
Eclipse (Linux)	Spyder IDE
Geany	SublimeText (vote here)
gEdit / Pluma
GNOME Builder
IntelliJ IDEA (2016.2+, instructions)
Kate, KWrite
Komodo
Leafpad
LibreOffice
LightTable (instructions)
MacVim 7.4 or newer (instructions)
Mancy
Meld
Mousepad
NetBeans
Notepad (Win)
PhpStorm (2016.2+, instructions)
PyCharm (2016.2+, instructions)
QtCreator
RStudio (instructions)
RubyMine (2016.2+, instructions)
Scratch
TextAdept (Linux, Mac)
TextEdit
TextMate 2
Visual Studio 2015
Visual Studio Code (instructions)
WebStorm (2016.2+, instructions)
Xamarin Studio/Monodevelop
Xcode (with this plugin)
Probably work: Smultron, Vico	Under question: Code::Blocks IDE

Browser support

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

Code examples

Ruby:

JavaScript:

Erlang:

Go:

LiveScript:

Clojure:

Alternatives

Other monospaced fonts with ligatures:

• Hasklig (free)
• PragmataPro (€59)
• Monoid (free)
• Fixedsys Excelsior (free)
• Iosevka (free)
• DejaVu Sans Code (free)

Credits

• Author: Nikita Prokopov @nikitonsky
• Based on: Fira Mono
• Inspired by: Hasklig
• Software: Glyphs 2 (thx Georg Seifert for a license)

Changelog

1.200 (July 18, 2016)

• Removed !!! ??? ;;; &&& ||| =~ (#167) ~~~ %%%
• New safer calt code that doesn’t apply ligatures to long sequences of chars, e.g. !!!!, >>>>, etc (#49, #110, #176)
• Larger + - * and corresponding ligatures (#86)
• Hexadecimal x (0xFF) is now applied to sequences like 128x128 as well (#161)
• Added twoTurned (U+218A) and threeTurned (U+218B) (#146)
• Added whiteFrowningFace (U+2639) (#190)
• Simplified visual style on markdown headers ## ### #### (#107)
• Added </> (#147)
• Provided ttf and webfonts versions (eot, woff, woff2) (#18, #24, #38, #101, #106)
• Increased spacing in <= >= (#117)

1.102

• Support for IntelliJ-based IDEs (instructions)
• Turned on autohinting

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 Glyphs 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 horizontal bars

0.3

Added: ~@ #? =:= =<

0.2.1

Fixed width of && and ||

0.2

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

0.1

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