Fonts
The bundled default, fallback chains, ligatures, and why CJK needs a word.
Settings → Appearance → Typography covers the everyday choices; the rest is
config.json.
| Setting | Default | |
|---|---|---|
| Font family | Hack | Picked from fonts installed on your system |
| Font size | 15 px | The terminal grid |
| Interface font size | 16 px | Everything outside the grid (12–24) |
| Interface font family | system UI font | The face for everything outside the grid |
| Line height | 1.4 | A multiple of the font size |
| Bold font / Italic font | — | Distinct faces, when you want them |
| Font ligatures | off | calt, liga and clig all stay off unless you ask |
Hack is bundled
The default font ships inside the binary. It renders identically on every machine without relying on a system install, so a fresh laptop looks like the one you set up last year.
Fallbacks
font_family is the primary face; font_fallbacks is an ordered list tried in
turn for anything the primary lacks.
{
"font_family": "JetBrains Mono",
"font_fallbacks": ["Maple Mono NF CN", "PingFang SC", "Apple Color Emoji"]
}Leave font_fallbacks out and you get the platform's default chain:
| Default fallbacks, in order | |
|---|---|
| macOS | Menlo · Hasklug Nerd Font Mono · Maple Mono NF CN · PingFang SC · Apple Color Emoji |
| Windows | Maple Mono NF CN · Cascadia Mono · Microsoft YaHei · Segoe UI Emoji |
| Linux | Maple Mono NF CN · DejaVu Sans Mono · Noto Sans CJK SC · Noto Color Emoji |
Each ends in faces the host OS actually ships, and those stock names are
appended to whatever list you write yourself — so a config.json copied from
another platform still resolves.
OpenType features
font_features passes tags straight through to the shaper:
{
"font_features": { "calt": true, "liga": 1, "ss01": true, "zero": false }
}A tag must be four alphanumeric characters; true/false map to 1/0.
Anything malformed is skipped with a log line rather than failing the whole
config.
Writing any tag hands the whole feature set to you: the terminal only names
calt: 0, liga: 0 and clig: 0 itself while font_features is unset. So
{"font_features": {"zero": 1}} turns slashed zeroes on and ligatures back
on. Name them explicitly if you want both:
{
"font_features": { "zero": 1, "calt": 0, "liga": 0, "clig": 0 }
}CJK and the two-column grid
A cell is one advance of the primary face, and a wide (CJK) character is pinned to exactly two of them. A CJK fallback sits flush in its slot only if its ideographs advance twice the primary's Latin advance.
Bundled Hack advances 0.60205em, so a two-column slot is 1.2041em — while every stock CJK face (Microsoft YaHei, PingFang SC, Noto Sans CJK) advances 1.0em. Those glyphs get left-aligned in the slot, leaving a ~0.2em gap on the right of every character.
Maple Mono NF CN is in every platform's default chain for exactly this reason: 0.6em Latin, 1.2em CJK, an exact two-cell fit against Hack. It leads the chain on Windows and Linux, and on macOS sits behind Menlo and Hasklug, which cover Latin and Nerd Font glyphs first. It is referenced by name only, never bundled (~20 MB per weight) — install it and Nermalpicks it up with no config change.
If you want CJK set tight rather than merely even, change the primary face instead. One that advances 0.5em — Sarasa Mono SC, say — makes two columns exactly 1.0em.