Hello again, JD here. Today I'm writing about how to install FiraCode on Windows and Ubuntu. This post is copying and pasting some commands on the console (at least that's the way I do it). So let's get to it.
About FiraCode
FiraCode is a monospaced font with programming ligatures developed by Nikita Prokopov (tonsky on GitHub).
Fira Code: free 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
Fira Code is a free monospaced font containing 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.
Download & Install
Then:
By the time I discovered FiraCode I was working on some JavaScript projects and that's the main reason I became so attracted to the font. FiraCode gives the arrow functions, the "===" and many other things an amazing look.
Installing on Windows
To install FiraCode on Windows we are going to use Chocolatey.
Note: If you have Python installed on Windows, I suggest you run the following command to verify if you have Chocolatey installed. Python installs Chocolatey to fetch some dependencies.
choco -v
If it returns the version number, then you're all set and you can jump directly to FiraCode command. If it doesn't, then run one of the following commands with administrative permissions to install Chocolatey.
Run this command on the CMD
@"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"
Or run this command on PowerShell
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))
FiraCode command
Finally, run this command to install FiraCode:
choco install firacode
And voilà! We've got FiraCode installed on Windows!
Installing on Ubuntu
To install FiraCode on Ubuntu you have to enable the universe repository. To do this we have to run the following commands on the terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt update
If that command doesn't work, try this one instead:
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) universe"
sudo apt update
And finally, run the command:
sudo apt install fonts-firacode
Ta-da! FiraCode is now on Ubuntu!
Conclusion
That's it! We've successfully installed FiraCode on both Windows and Ubuntu! Let me know in the comments if this was helpful, or if there's something I should improve! 😁
Top comments (10)
Another way for linux users is to create a
.fontsdirectory in your root folder and download the Zip file. After extracting move the font folder to your.fontsfolderThank you, this is most helpful. 🎉
@josuerodriquez98 I'm currently on ubuntu 20.04, and after I install the font it doesn't ever work. Any tips?
Try adding these two lines in your settings.json or just declare them in your worksapces. After that it will be working i am sure because it works for me.
'''
"editor.fontFamily": "'Fira Code'",
"editor.fontLigatures": true
'''
I'm using Ubuntu 20.04, too, and this works for me.
You may need to change the font settings in the app of your choice, too (code editor like vscode, for example), and restart the app if your app is running while you install the font package.
Thanks a lot!
Thank you
It's nice font
Thank you for this simple and working solution
Thanks man. This works.