Monospace Font Review (2025-08)

Font Comparison. Lucindia Console, Consolas, Cascadia Mono, Julia Mono

Font Review 2025

Massive font geeking in past days 10 hour spent on studying font. I do so every some 5 years. Lots asking ai and research and test in emacs.

now my default font for emacs is:

• on Microsoft Windows is Consolas. (was Cascadia Mono)
• on Mac is menlo.
• on linux, 10 years ago it was DejaVu Sans Mono, probably remains.

here's some random notes.

First, important to know what is the default monospace font in operating system. Because default is almost always the best. And you no have to diddle.

• Microsoft. Lucida Console from year 2000 to 2011.
• Microsoft. Consolas from 2007.
• Microsoft. Cascadia Mono from 2019. Open Source.
• macOS. Menlo (since 2009)

About line spacing, important for coders. Small line spacing let you see more lines per screen.

• Lucidia Console is the best in least line spacing. But it has a problem of not putting a dot or slash in 0.
• Consolas is the second best.
• Cascadia Mono has more line spacing than Consolas.
• JuliaMono is no good. Big line spacing.

What about Unicode characters, math and tech symbols.

• DejaVu Sans Mono begin this trend around 2010.
• JuliaMono is renowned for the most unicode characters.
• However, these days, font substitution tech in robust. also, in emacs, you can set symbol font and emoji font specifically.
• Most fonts for code today includes all the hundreds of math and tech unicode characters. All the basic ones you need.

What about ligature?

Ligature such as combining -> to display as → is shit. You want to see char as is, not seeing middlemen. Never use ligature shit.

Fira Code began the code ligature fad of zoomers, around 2014.

Font showing lowline character connected

• Annoying that most modern fonts shows the low line char _ connected.
• This is a problem if _ is used as operators, _ __ ___ you want to be able to tell how many are there.

Lucindia Console

• after more experiment, now am back to Lucindia Console, on windows.
• it has the most compact line spacing.
• i get to see 5 extra lines in my typical window height.
• it has a feel of compact n dense. i like it.

Back to Consolas

after a week, am back to to Consolas (when on Windows)

Lucida Console is too tight and squarely, that seems lines look the same.

Font experiment websites

• https://www.codingfont.com/
• https://app.programmingfonts.org/