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Cover image for JetBrains Mono - font for developers by developers
Tomek Poniatowicz for GraphQL Editor

Posted on • Edited on • Originally published at blog.graphqleditor.com

JetBrains Mono - font for developers by developers

JetBrains is a company well-know for all developers. They have an impressive portfolio of dev tools among which the most popular ones are definitely IntelliJ (Java IDE) & Kotlin programming language.

JetBrains doesn't slow down in 2020 and they have just published their new product which is ... a font!
But not any font, its a font created by developers for developers and I must say ... IT'S AWESOME!

Mono Font by JetBrains

Source: jetbrains.com

Increased readability

Why this font is so special? It's simple.

JetBrains Mono’s typeface forms are free from unnecessary details which makes them easier to process for our brains. A number of specific typographic procedures have been performed to increase the readability such as:

  • increasing the height of lowercase letters,
  • easier distinguishing similar characters ( e.g. 1, l, I or semicolon with a colon).

Besides a couple of readability improvements the font also provides:

  • 138 code-specific ligatures
  • support 143 language
  • is available in 4 weights with matching italics
  • is FREE & OPEN SOURCE!

Take a look!

JetBrains Mono vs Consolas

If you love the concept of JetBrains Mono I have great news!
It's available under the Apache 2.0 license and can be downloaded from the JetBrains website.


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Top comments (15)

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budhead2004 profile image
Bud • Edited

Neat, have you had a chance to compare this Fira Code?

Update/Edit

So I've been running this font for the better part of day. Transitioning from Fira Code was pretty seamless, all the ligatures I use daily are available. I like the simplified characters compared to Fira, in my opinion it makes scanning JSX/TSX slightly easier, this might also be due to the adjusted character spacing. Overall I think it's a good competitor to Fira Code. There's no clear winner here, both are nice to use, it'll come down to personal preference in the end.

Current VSCode Font Settings

"terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "JetBrains Mono",
"terminal.integrated.fontSize": 12,
"editor.fontSize": 13,
"editor.fontFamily": "JetBrains Mono",
"editor.fontLigatures": true,
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arnas profile image
Arnas

Check their web site jetbrains.com/lp/mono/ they have few comparisons with Fira Coda.

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slushnys profile image
Zigmas Slušnys • Edited

Hello fellow Lithuanian!😃 Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.

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tomekbuszewski profile image
Tomasz Buszewski

This is a great font, first one with decent ligatures that I can use without thinking "wtf is this" every ten second when I see one.

It's funny how far we've got from using Fixedsys, Courier and Courier New.

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metalmikester profile image
Michel Renaud

I installed it last week. Looks very good. The ligatures were a bit of a surprise. :)

A couple of my coworkers are also trying it out.

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camerenisonfire profile image
Cameren Dolecheck

Thanks for showing this. I'd been using Fira Code for about a year. This seems like a good step forward.

Also, that is the best typeface marketing website I've ever seen.

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tomekponiat profile image
Tomek Poniatowicz

We have been using Fira Code too and we were shocked that this one seems to be even better :P
PS: You are totally right - this landing is awesome :)

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vaibhavkhulbe profile image
Vaibhav Khulbe

Definitely worth a try! I'm currently in love with Dank Mono and Fira Code.

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mattiascibien profile image
Mattias Cibien

Did not try Jerbrains Mono at the moment. I guess I'll give it a go and compare it to my Cascadia Code which at the moment is my font for both IDEs and terminal

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itsjzt profile image
Saurabh Sharma

Using this for past few days, I would say it's the best free font currently available

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esteban03 profile image
Esteban S.

nice

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mpetrinidev profile image
Mauro Petrini 👨‍💻

Cool 🤩

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osde8info profile image
Clive Da • Edited

also heard about it from devto and installed it last week in mousepad and xfce4terminal