DEV Community

Sam Wronski
Sam Wronski

Posted on • Originally published at worldofzero.com

Using Font Ligatures in VS Code

Font ligatures combine multiple characters into a single unique character. Some fonts provide ligatures specifically for software development.

Font Ligatures in VS Code infographic

Some free fonts that support ligatures are:

Font Reference
Cascadia Code link
Fira Code link
JetBrains Mono link
Iosevka link
Hasklig link
Monoid link
Victor Mono link

To enable font ligatures in Visual Studio Code you will need to edit the settings.json file. To do this open the VS Code settings (File -> Preferences -> Settings) select the Text Editor group and Font settings. Replace the name of the font with the font you would like to use. For example if you would like to use Cascadia Code then replace the font with Cascadia Code. You may include fallback fonts that will be used if the first font is not available. Cascadia Code, Fira Code will prioritize Cascadia Code but use Fira Code if Cascadia Code isn't available on the current machine.

Once you've configured the font you'll need to explicitly enable ligatures. This is a separate option and requires you to modify the settings.json file directly. You will need to add the "editor.fontLigatures" setting to your settings.json settings file. Once this is done your settings should include two lines that look something like this:

{
  "editor.fontFamily": "*** Your ligature enabled font ***",
  "editor.fontLigatures": true,
  "...": "your other settings",
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Once you've made these changes you should be ready to start taking advantage of ligatures in your code.

Note: Different fonts may support a different set of ligatures.

Top comments (0)