JetBrains Mono Nerd Font
A safe default coding font — tall x-height, clear glyph separation, programming ligatures.
What it does
JetBrains Mono was designed for reading code: a taller x-height for legibility at small sizes, deliberately distinct 1lI and 0O, and ligatures for common operator sequences (->, !=, >=).
This cask is the Nerd Font patched build, which adds icon glyphs on top — file type icons in lsd, powerline separators and language symbols in Starship, box drawing in TUI tools.
Ligatures and OpenType features
From version 2.304 the family ships stylistic sets and character variants alongside the ligatures:
| Feature | Effect |
|---|---|
calt | Every ligature. On by default; 'calt' 0 removes all of them |
zero | Slashed zero |
ss01–ss20 | Stylistic sets — each changes a group of characters |
cv01–cv99 | Character variants — each changes a single character |
The combination worth knowing is alternates without ligatures, which the upstream documentation gives as 'calt' 0, 'zero', 'cv01', 'cv03', 'cv07', 'cv12'. For editors with no OpenType control, JetBrains Mono NL is a separate build containing no ligatures at all.
The syntax for switching any of these on or off, per editor and per terminal, is on the Fonts page.
Notes
- Set it in iTerm2 under Profiles → Text; a separate non-ASCII font is unnecessary because the patched build covers those ranges itself.
- Editors need the font set separately from the terminal — in VS Code,
editor.fontFamily.
Alternative to
| Alternative | Type | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Fira Code | Open source | The font that popularised programming ligatures |
| Cascadia Code | Open source | Microsoft’s, also ligature-heavy, with a cursive italic |
| IBM Plex Mono and SF Mono | Open source / Built in | Clean, no ligatures, no patching needed |
| Iosevka | Open source | Narrow, endlessly configurable, fits more columns on screen |
| Berkeley Mono and MonoLisa | Paid | The two people actually pay for |
Install
brew install --cask font-jetbrains-mono-nerd-font