Fira Code

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Specification

Designer

The Mozilla Foundation, Telefonica S.A., Nikita Prokopov

Released

2014

Category

Monospace

License

OFL-1.1

Commercial use

Allowed

Good for

Code editors, Terminals, Technical documentation, Code snippets

Weights

300, 400, 500, 600, 700

Styles

Normal

Variable

Yes

Glyphs

1,857

Languages

Latin, Latin Extended, Türkçe, Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended, Greek, Greek Extended

Download size

138 KB

Source

github.com/tonsky/FiraCode

Questions

Is Fira Code free for commercial use?

Yes. Fira Code is released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, which allows commercial use with no fee and no attribution requirement. You can use it in client work, in products you sell, on the web and in print. The one thing you may not do is sell the font file on its own. The licence is inside the download.

Can I use Fira Code in a logo?

Yes. The licence covers the font software, not the artwork you make with it, so a logo set in Fira Code belongs to you — including if you later register it as a trademark. You do not need permission and you do not owe anything to The Mozilla Foundation, Telefonica S.A., Nikita Prokopov. What the licence stops you doing is redistributing the font file itself as a product.

How do I install Fira Code?

Download the zip and unzip it. On a Mac, select the 1 font file inside and open them, then press Install Font. On Windows, select them, right-click and choose Install. Restart any application that was already open before it will show up. Fira Code is a variable font: the single file carries all 5 weights at once. Some older software — Word, Canva, and Photoshop before 2018 — reads only the one weight the file defaults to, and for Fira Code that is Light (300), not the regular. If that happens, use the Static download on this page instead: it has 5 ordinary files, one per weight, and works everywhere.

Does Fira Code support Turkish?

Yes. Fira Code includes the characters Türkçe needs that plain Latin does not — the dotless ı, the dotted İ, and ğ, ş, ü, ö and ç in both cases. This was checked against the font file itself, not assumed from the fact that it covers Latin.

What languages does Fira Code support?

Fira Code covers Latin, Latin Extended, Turkish, Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended, Greek and Greek Extended, across 1,857 glyphs. Anything outside those alphabets is not included — the character map further up this page shows exactly what you get.

Does Fira Code support Cyrillic?

Yes. Fira Code includes the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Cyrillic Extended set as well, which adds the letters for languages beyond Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Serbian. This was read from the font file itself. The complete WOFF2 and the zip both carry it; only the Latin-only web file leaves it out.

What weights does Fira Code come in?

Fira Code comes in 5 weights: Light (300), Regular (400), Medium (500), Semi Bold (600) and Bold (700). It is a variable font, so every one of them is in a single file and you can also set any weight in between.

Is there a smaller, Latin-only version of Fira Code?

Yes — the "WOFF2 · Latin only" button on this page. It is 42 KB against 104 KB for the complete file, 60% smaller, with every weight the family has still in it. It covers Latin and Latin Extended, which is everything a page in English, Turkish or a western European language sets — Türkçe included, since ı, İ, ğ and ş all live in that range. Take the complete file instead if you set Cyrillic, Greek or any alphabet outside Latin.

Where can I download Fira Code as WOFF2?

From the WOFF2 button on this page — the file is fira-code.woff2, and it is about 104 KB. It is the complete font repacked for the web rather than a cut-down copy: the same glyphs, the same spacing and the same hinting as the .ttf in the download, roughly 60% smaller. Every browser still receiving updates reads WOFF2, so it is the only web format most sites need. Google Fonts does not offer this file for download at all — it serves WOFF2 from its own servers and gives you .ttf if you ask for the family.

What are programming ligatures, and do I have to switch them on?

A ligature is one glyph standing in for several characters. Fira Code adds a set of them for the combinations that appear constantly in code: the two keystrokes of an arrow are drawn as a single arrow, the not-equals pair becomes one crossed-out equals sign, three dots become an evenly spaced ellipsis. Nothing about your file changes — what is saved to disk is exactly what you typed, and a compiler, or another person opening the file, sees ordinary ASCII. In editors that support ligatures at all they are usually on by default, and they are the reason almost everybody downloads this font. You can watch it happen on this page: type an exclamation mark followed by an equals sign into the specimen box above and the two characters join into a single crossed-out equals as you type.

Why are the ligatures not showing up in my editor?

Because the editor is not asking for them. Ligatures are an OpenType feature and an application has to switch it on for the text it draws. VS Code needs editor.fontLigatures set to true in its settings; JetBrains editors have an "Enable font ligatures" checkbox under Font; iTerm2, Kitty, WezTerm and Alacritty each have their own setting, and some terminals do not support them at all. Notepad, most plain text boxes and many older terminals will never show them. The font is not broken when this happens — you simply get an ordinary monospace without the joined shapes.