# Building and Customizing Iosevka as a Programming Font on macOS

DevFeed: [Building and Customizing Iosevka as a Programming Font on macOS](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/my-new-programming-font-iosevka-25227.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://kau.sh/blog/build-iosevka-font-mac-os/>)

Author: Kaushik Gopal

Published: 2020-04-14T07:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Kaushik Gopal's Site](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/kaushik-gopal-s-site.md>)

Topics: [Font](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/font.md>), [Programming](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/programming.md>), [macOS](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/macos.md>), [Open Source](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/open-source.md>), [Homebrew](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/homebrew.md>)

Tags: [fonts](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/fonts.md>), [homebrew](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/homebrew.md>), [ligatures](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ligatures.md>), [macos](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/macos.md>), [npm](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/npm.md>), [open-source](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/open-source.md>), [programming](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/programming.md>), [programming-font](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/programming-font.md>)

## AI overview

The article explains why the author prefers Iosevka over IBM Plex Mono for programming, citing legibility, narrow spacing, open-source availability, customization, and ligatures. It also describes customizing glyphs and building a customized version from source on macOS using Homebrew, pip, and npm.

## Source excerpt

If you're looking to just copy-paste instructions, jump to the section below. For the longest time, I've been rocking IBM Plex Mono as my programming font. While it has served me well, I started to experiment with some newer monospaced typefaces to see if I could find one that was even more legible.1 That experiment quickly devolved into a rabbit-hole evaluation of a bunch of new programming fonts. Hello Iosevka ## Eventually, I landed up with the font Iosevka: It's far more legible (courtesy the extra long glyphs) It's set pretty narrow which makes it pretty space efficient 2 It's 100% open-source You can build the font from source and customize it pretty extensively There's ligatures (...or not ...or dig this- for specific languages!) Now at the outset, I actually didn't like Iosevka at all. It was unbearably narrow for my taste but thankfully it also comes with an "Extended" variant. The extended variant adds a little more breathing room between characters making it less condensed. After I fiddled with it more and chose specific glyphs that are easier on my eyes, I think I landed up with a version that I absolutely love: It's more legible and dare I say a little more appealing than the trusty IBM Plex Mono .3 It almost hearkens back to my Inconsolata days (inspired by Gary Bernhardt's DAS screen casts). Customizing Iosevka ## Iosevka allows you to pick specific glyphs for certain characters. If you notice the cherry-picking section in the above image, I've chosen slightly different variants of g, l, y, G, Q, *, $ and %. If you head on over to the main website, you can even live preview and test a bunch of combinations. Build Iosevka from source (on macOS) ## Once you've indulged your stylistic tendencies and honed in on the style you prefer, you can build the font right from the source. I didn't find too many instructions online on how to do this with a Mac, so if you're looking to do the same, this should save you some trouble: Install necessary dependencies ### You