MonoLisa
The one in this list you have to buy, and the only one designed as a coding font from the first sketch.
What it does
MonoLisa was drawn by type designers specifically for code, rather than adapted from a text face. The consequences are visible at small sizes: wider apertures so c, e and s do not close up, less repetition between similar shapes, and a slightly proportional feel achieved within the monospace grid by adjusting the drawing rather than the widths.
It ships in nine weights with true italics, a large ligature set that can be bought or omitted, and a variable build. Character variants cover the usual arguments — a single or double-storey a and g, a slashed, dotted or plain zero, straight or curly l.
Ligatures and OpenType features
Ligatures sit in calt as usual, and the family is unusually generous with ssXX and cvXX alternates — most of the opinionated glyphs have two or three forms, selectable per editor.
The buying page lets you build the set: with or without ligatures, with or without the script and italic styles. The syntax for switching any of it on or off, per editor and per terminal, is on the Fonts page.
Notes
- Licensed per person for personal use, with separate team and application-embedding licences. There is no free tier and no trial beyond the web previewer.
- No Homebrew cask, by definition — the files arrive from the purchase, and installing them is a drag into Font Book.
Alternative to
| Alternative | Type | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| JetBrains Mono | Open source | The free font MonoLisa is most often compared against |
| Berkeley Mono | Paid | The other paid favourite; sharper, more retro, similar price |
| Dank Mono | Paid | Cheaper, with a cursive italic as its signature |
| Operator Mono | Paid | The font that started the cursive-italic fashion, and the most expensive |
| Fira Code | Open source | Free, with the most configurable ligature set of the open families |
Install
Buy and download from the developer, then open the .otf or .ttf files in Font Book:
# install for the current user from a downloaded folder
cp MonoLisa*/*.otf ~/Library/Fonts/