A typeface designed for source code (original) (raw)
A Family of Four Faces
Hack includes monospaced regular, bold,italic, and bold italic sets to cover all of your syntax highlighting needs.
Multilingual
Over 1500 glyphs that include lovingly tuned extended Latin, modern Greek, and Cyrillic character sets.
Powerline Support
Powerline glyphs are included in the regular set. Patching is not necessary. Install and go.
A Workhorse for Code
No frills. No gimmicks.
Hack is hand groomed and optically balanced to be your go-to code face.
Features
Metrics & Style
Type design features to improve legibility in the harsh conditions of the screen.
- Minimal stroke contrast
- Large x-height
- Open counters
- Wide apertures
- Sturdy terminals
Type Traits
Functional
with a bit of personality
- Oval fill in the zero counter
- Curved tails on select glyphs
- Rounded square alphabetic points
- Round analphabetic points
- Semi-bold punctuation weight
- Angled vertical tails & extenders
- Widely set punctuation
Free and Open Source
A libre typeface with generous licensing that permits modification & commercial use
- Free to modify
- Free for print, desktop, & web
- Free for commercial use
- Free to redistribute
- Free of cost
A typeface in the Bitstream Vera lineage
Hack has deep roots in the libre, open source typeface community and includes the contributions of the Bitstream Vera & DejaVu projects.
The face has been re-designed with an expanded glyph set, modifications of the original glyph shapes, and meticulous attention to metrics.
The Cast of Characters
Letters, punctuation, and symbols are well-balanced and easily distinguished.
The regular weight is comfortable to read at the small text sizes used for source code development.
Click either image above for a full type specimen.
Source Examples
JavaScript Source
Click for JS specimen
Specimen
Python Source
Click for Python specimen
Specimen
Distinct Glyph Shapes
A Handful of Serifs
Strategically placed serifs improve the rhythm of the monospaced text by eliminating large gaps on each side of narrow characters and help to distinguish glyphs like the lowercase l and number 1 at small text sizes.
Weight and Spacing
The punctuation characters were designed with a heavier semi-bold weight in the regular font and are set with wide sidebearings on the side adjacent to alphabetic characters. These design strategies emphasize these important analphabetic characters and make them more apparent (or less transparent) in your code.
Grab the carousel images and drag to the left or right to view other characters that commonly have legibility issues.
Download
For a quick installation, choose the option for your operating system below. This will download either an archive with TrueType (.ttf) fonts, or take you to the download site for a convenient setup application that will help install Hack on Windows systems.
macOS and Linux (.zip) Windows (.exe)
Try Hack in your browser
Our interactive Font Playground allows you to try Hack (without installing it) directly from your browser via a simple code editor. It also allows you to compare Hack with various other typefaces that are commonly used for source code.
Web Font CDN
Embed Hack in your website or web application by including one of the following code snippets into the section of your document.
ASCII, Latin-1, Latin Extended A Subset
<link rel='stylesheet' href='//cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/build/web/hack-subset.css'>Full Character Set
<link rel='stylesheet' href='//cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/build/web/hack.css'>