FAQ

General questions

How can I send feedback related to the typeface?

We’re eager to improve the font and make it better for everyone. Use the following options:

  • For anything private, send us email and we’ll get back to you
How to download the typeface?

You can download the latest version in “My orders” section by providing the email you used during the checkout and the order number.

How can I figure out which version of the typeface I have installed?

Mac OS: Use either the Font Book app or a terminal command like otfccdump MonoLisa-Regular.ttf | jq .head.fontRevision . The command depends on otfcc and jq.

Linux: The same terminal trick works under Linux as well.

As a general solution, you can use the FontDrop web service.

How can I download the latest version of the typeface?

You can download the latest version in “My orders” section by providing the email you used during the checkout and the order number.

My download link doesn’t work. How can I access the typeface?

You can download the latest version in “My orders” section by providing the email you used during the checkout and the order number.

How to upgrade to a higher-tier bundle?

Yes, you can upgrade now or later by visiting My Orders page. We will deduct the amount you already paid from the next-tier product. The same applies also for student licenses.

How to install the typeface?

Windows

See installing fonts on Windows

Linux

Please refer to the documentation of your Linux distribution. Note that ttf most likely works better than otf so if otf doesn’t look good, try ttf as well especially on low resolution displays.

macOs

To install:

  1. Select and open all downloaded files (.otf)
  1. Click on “Install font”

To uninstall:

  1. Open Font Book.app
  1. Find MonoLisa using search
  1. Right-click on it and choose Remove “MonoLisa” Family
  1. Empty trash bin

To update:

  1. Download the latest version of the font from the orders page
  1. Remove the old version of the font using Font Book.app
  1. Install the newer version of the font

You might need to restart your computer to see the newer version of the font in your editor. If that doesn’t work, please see next question.

To clear the font cache:

  1. Run the following in Terminal.app
sudo atsutil databases -remove
atsutil server -shutdown
atsutil server -ping
  1. Restart your computer
  1. Re-install the font (see previous question)

Please refer to these instructions if you still can’t update the font.

Orders

How to change the email of my order?

Please ask the Paddle support to do this for you as they manage the data related to the orders.

Can I get a refund for my order?

See the refund policy for the exact terms and conditions.

I want to buy licenses for my team/company. How can I do that?

There are so called team licenses available and the specifics for this are available at the license in the section 1.E Multi-User Licenses. In effect, you have to perform a small calculation to figure out how many licenses are needed based on the amount of users you have.

Features

Which weights/formats are included?

The exact weights have been listed below:

  • Personal – Regular (400), Bold (600)
  • Plus – Light (300), Regular (400), Medium (500), Bold (600)
  • Professional – Thin (100), ExtraLight (200), Light (300), Regular (400), Medium (500), Bold (600), Black (700)

You can download your purchased package in a format of your choice (otf, ttf, woff, woff2) in the my orders page.

💡

Note that the plus and professional packages contain more alternative glyphs and have access to the customize tool that makes it easy to generate custom versions of the typeface even per application. This way you can avoid software limitations and use exactly the features you want (plus, pro).

Settings & usage

What languages does MonoLisa support?

MonoLisa currently supports following languages:

  1. Abenaki
  1. Afaan Oromo
  1. Afar
  1. Afrikaans
  1. Albanian
  1. Alsatian
  1. Amis
  1. Anuta
  1. Aragonese
  1. Aranese
  1. Aromanian
  1. Arrernte
  1. Arvanitic
  1. Asturian
  1. Atayal
  1. Aymara
  1. Azerbaijani
  1. Bashkir
  1. Basque
  1. Belarusian
  1. Bemba
  1. Bikol
  1. Bislama
  1. Bosnian
  1. Breton
  1. Bulgarian Romanization
  1. Cape Verdean
  1. Catalan
  1. Cebuano
  1. Chamorro
  1. Chavacano
  1. Chichewa
  1. Chickasaw
  1. Chinese Pinyin
  1. Cimbrian
  1. Cofan
  1. Cornish
  1. Corsican
  1. Crimean Tatar
  1. Croatian
  1. Czech
  1. Danish
  1. Dawan
  1. Delaware
  1. Dholuo
  1. Drehu
  1. Dutch
  1. English
  1. Esperanto
  1. Estonian
  1. Faroese
  1. Fijian
  1. Filipino
  1. Finnish
  1. Folkspraak
  1. French
  1. Frisian
  1. Friulian
  1. Gagauz
  1. Galician
  1. Ganda
  1. Genoese
  1. German
  1. Gikuyu
  1. Gooniyandi
  1. Greek
  1. Greenlandic
  1. Guadeloupean
  1. Gwichin
  1. Haitian Creole
  1. Han
  1. Hawaiian
  1. Hiligaynon
  1. Hopi
  1. Hotcak
  1. Hungarian
  1. Icelandic
  1. Ido
  1. Igbo
  1. Ilocano
  1. Indonesian
  1. Interglossa
  1. Interlingua
  1. Irish
  1. Istroromanian
  1. Italian
  1. Jamaican
  1. Javanese
  1. Jerriais
  1. Kaingang
  1. Kala Lagaw Ya
  1. Kapampangan
  1. Kaqchikel
  1. Karakalpak
  1. Karelian
  1. Kashubian
  1. Kikongo
  1. Kinyarwanda
  1. Kiribati
  1. Kirundi
  1. Klingon
  1. Kurdish
  1. Ladin
  1. Latin
  1. Latino Sine
  1. Latvian
  1. Lithuanian
  1. Lojban
  1. Lombard
  1. Low Saxon
  1. Luxembourgish
  1. Maasai
  1. Makhuwa
  1. Malay
  1. Maltese
  1. Manx
  1. Maori
  1. Marquesan
  1. Meglenoromanian
  1. Meriam Mir
  1. Mirandese
  1. Mohawk
  1. Moldovan
  1. Montagnais
  1. Montenegrin
  1. Murrinhpatha
  1. Nagamese Creole
  1. Nahuatl
  1. Ndebele
  1. Neapolitan
  1. Ngiyambaa
  1. Niuean
  1. Noongar
  1. Norwegian
  1. Novial
  1. Occidental
  1. Occitan
  1. Old Icelandic
  1. Old Norse
  1. Oshiwambo
  1. Ossetian
  1. Palauan
  1. Papiamento
  1. Piedmontese
  1. Pinyin
  1. Polish
  1. Portuguese
  1. Potawatomi
  1. Qeqchi
  1. Quechua
  1. Rarotongan
  1. Romanian
  1. Romansh
  1. Rotokas
  1. Russian
  1. Sami
  1. Sami Inari
  1. Sami Lule
  1. Sami Northern
  1. Sami Southern
  1. Samoan
  1. Sango
  1. Saramaccan
  1. Sardinian
  1. Scottish Gaelic
  1. Serbian
  1. Seri
  1. Seychellois
  1. Shawnee
  1. Shona
  1. Sicilian
  1. Silesian
  1. Slovak
  1. Slovenian
  1. Slovio
  1. Somali
  1. Sorbian Lower
  1. Sorbian Upper
  1. Sotho Northern
  1. Sotho Southern
  1. Spanish
  1. Sranan
  1. Sundanese
  1. Swahili
  1. Swazi
  1. Swedish
  1. Tagalog
  1. Tahitian
  1. Tetum
  1. Tok Pisin
  1. Tokelauan
  1. Tongan
  1. Tshiluba
  1. Tsonga
  1. Tswana
  1. Tumbuka
  1. Turkish
  1. Turkmen
  1. Tuvaluan
  1. Tzotzil
  1. Ukrainian
  1. Uzbek
  1. Venetian
  1. Vepsian
  1. Vietnamese
  1. Volapuk
  1. Voro
  1. Wallisian
  1. Walloon
  1. Waraywaray
  1. Warlpiri
  1. Wayuu
  1. Welsh
  1. Wikmungkan
  1. Wiradjuri
  1. Wolof
  1. Xavante
  1. Xhosa
  1. Yapese
  1. Yindjibarndi
  1. Zapotec
  1. Zarma
  1. Zazaki
  1. Zulu
  1. Zuni

Usage

How to use the typeface in program X?

Generally put, the editor support for special features included in MonoLisa is weak. VS Code documented below is an exception to this rule. For the rest, it’s preferable to use the customize tool to generate a typeface that makes sense for your use case.

The same goes for terminals as majority of them don’t expose many font features and you are lucky if you can toggle ligatures.

Design software tends to have better support (esp. Adobe products, Figma, and Affinity Designer). For something more presentation oriented, such as Pages, using the customize tool is the way to go again.

How to enable alternate zero, stylistic sets, and the script variant?

Some OpenType features of MonoLisa are optional and they are hidden behind stylistic sets. At the moment, editor support for the feature is unfortunately poor.

VS Code

In VS Code the example below, we enable calt glyphs (space alterations), disable ligatures (liga), enable the alternate zero (zero) and the script variant (ss02) at settings.json:

{
  "editor.fontLigatures": "'calt' on, 'liga' off, 'zero' on, 'ss02' on"
}

The editor.fontLigatures accepts standard CSS.

Other editors

To mitigate the problem for the rest of us, additionally you can customize your font before downloading it. This allows removing ligatures or enabling script variant by default for any editor.

For the personal edition, please use fonttools-opentype-feature-freezer or a comparable tool.

What are the suggested settings for WebStorm?

Go to Preferences → Editor → Font and set the font to MonoLisa. Adjust the remaining options to your liking.

Preferences → Editor → Font
Preferences → Editor → Font
Can I use the personal license for programming at my job/company?

Yes, no problem.

What are the recommended settings for iTerm 2?

Depending on your display and sight, you could set the size even down to 11. It’s good to have `anti-aliased` on and set `Use ligatures` based on your preference.

Example below:

Visual Studio Code

How to enable the script variant for comments or function names?

To do this, make sure ss02 is enabled and that italic font style is being applied to your theme. The configuration below does this globally for VS Code:

settings.json

{
  "editor.fontLigatures": "'ss02' on",
  "editor.tokenColorCustomizations": {
    "textMateRules": [
      {
        "scope": "comment",
        "settings": {
          "fontStyle": "italic"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

See the related Stack Overflow question for more information.

What are the suggested settings?

settings.json

{
    "editor.fontFamily": "MonoLisa",
    "editor.lineHeight": 0,
    "editor.fontLigatures": true,
    "editor.fontSize": 12
}

Setting lineHeight to zero means VS Code will figure out the height automatically based on the font.

How to change the font weight?

In order to alter the font weight, you should use the editor.fontWeight field like this:

settings.json

{
    "editor.fontFamily": "MonoLisa",
    "editor.fontWeight": "400",
}

Adjust the number based on the fonts you own. 400 is regular and the rest are with 100 increments (300 for light for example and 700 for bold).

How to make MonoLisa take less vertical space?

If the default line height of MonoLisa feels too roomy for you, try adjusting it in VS Code like this:

settings.json

{
  "editor.lineHeight": 16
}

Tweak the number till it looks good to you. You can use zero to use the default measurement to compare.

What Developers Say

Gant Laborde
Gant LabordeCIO at Infinite Red

As a consultant, an instructor, and a presenter, having a clean and engaging mono font is paramount, and MonoLisa delivers information perfectly to everyone without forgetting to sneak in some personality in a gentle smile.

Kyle Welch
Kyle WelchSenior Software Developer at Eventbrite

MonoLisa is now my go to font for all places. It has become my expectation in my terminal and code to the point that seeing other fonts confuses me. From the well designed and unique characters make it simple to parse and read throughout the day.

Horacio Herrera
Horacio HerreraIndependent consultant

This font is so sharp that the readability of my code increased a lot! Definitely a font I will use for a long time.

Max Stoiber
Max StoiberFrontend Developer at Gatsby

I love it ♥️

Mark Dalgleish
Mark DalgleishDeveloper at SEEK

I’ve been using MonoLisa as my editor font for the past few months. After a small adjustment period, I really grew to love it. Going back to any of my old font choices feels like a downgrade in comparison.

David Khourshid
David KhourshidSoftware developer at Microsoft

I’ve been using this font for months, and while the slightly wider nature of this font took a little getting used to at first, it eventually grew on me and I saw how well this font works with my daily workflow. A great, quality font and I highly recommend it!

Sara Vieira
Sara VieiraEngineer at CodeSandbox

As someone with an eye condition this font makes my life way easier. And not just in coding but even in design since it doesn’t only carry regular but the whole set of weights so you can even use it in design, logos or anything a monospace font makes sense.

Cassidy Williams
Cassidy WilliamsTeaching and coding at React Training

I switched to MonoLisa after trying out several different fonts in my terminal and in my IDE. As a coding instructor and speaker (and just someone who codes a lot in her free time), readability is always the most important thing to me in a font.

Kent C. Dodds
Kent C. DoddsMaking people's lives better with software

I’m not much of a font guy, but after using this font for just a few days it’s grown on my and I really like it. (And people wasted no time in constantly asking me what font I use). Two thumbs up 👍👍

Dominik Sumer
Dominik SumerCo-Founder of seriouscode.io

Love the aesthetics of the font and how it improves code readability. That’s why we’ve also decided to use it as the default font at snappify.io

Michał Popek
Michał PopekFrontend Developer

I had been struggling with some vision issues before and MonoLisa really helped me a lot by taking a lot of strain off my eyes.

Caleb Porzio
Caleb PorzioCreator of Alpine.js

MonoLisa is the perfect coding font IMO. Spacious, stylish, and super readable. I never pictured myself having such strong feelings about a font, yet here we are.