I stumbled across this excellent review of Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono and immediately switched my terminal and editor fonts. A week later, I switched this site too.
The font was created by the Braille Institute
specifically for low-vision readers. Every character is designed to be unmistakably itself - the
l, I, and 1 are clearly distinct; 0 and O
can't be confused; mirror pairs like b/d/p/q have asymmetrical features.
The practical result after using it for coding: less eye strain, fewer misread characters when scanning logs or commit hashes, and a general sense of clarity I didn't know I was missing.
The Trade-off
No ligatures. If you rely on != becoming a single glyph or =>
looking like an arrow, this font won't do that. I don't miss them.
Bracket distinction ([] vs {}) is also weaker than JetBrains Mono.
For bracket-heavy languages this might matter. For my work, it hasn't.
Get It
Free and open source (SIL Open Font License):
- Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono (for code)
- Atkinson Hyperlegible (proportional, for prose)
- Braille Institute download
Further Reading
The review that convinced me: Font comparison and review: Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono by anthesis. Thorough breakdown comparing it against JetBrains Mono, Fira Code, and others.