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Warning

V8 is still under development and has not been officially released. If you need a stable version, please use the v7 branch.

Maple Mono is an open-source monospace font designed to make coding more comfortable and efficient.

I created it to improve my own productivity, and hope it helps more people enjoy writing code.

Why Maple Mono?

✨ Variable font support - Adjust the weight continuously, with carefully refined italic glyphs for flexible typography.
☁️ Rounded shapes and visual refinement - Rounded throughout, with redesigned @ $ % & Q ->, refined italic connections (f i j k l x y), and multiple character-width modes.
🪄 Enhanced smart ligatures - Extensive smart ligatures, character variants, OpenType stylistic sets, and built-in status-label ligatures make code easier to read and more expressive.
🔣 Extended Unicode coverage - Includes box-drawing characters, Braille, mathematical operators (U+2200–U+22FF), chess and card symbols, terminal status and progress symbols, and Claude Code loading indicators for scientific and development workflows.
🎨 Nerd Font icon support - Integrates Nerd Fonts natively for clear, readable interfaces across development tools and terminals.
🔨 Highly customizable builds - Configure OpenType features, custom tag ligatures, line height, character width, and weight mapping, or generate a custom font from source.

Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean

Maple Mono supports CJK character sets. Compared with V7, V8 greatly expands and improves its CJK coverage for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. CJK glyphs use a 2:1 width ratio with Latin characters to keep multilingual text and Markdown tables aligned; as a trade-off, the default CJK spacing is wider than in many other CJK fonts. See this issue for details.

Locale	Coverage	CJK font source	Build output
CN	Simplified Chinese, with common Traditional Chinese and Japanese ranges	WenYuan Rounded SC	`CN`
TC	Traditional Chinese	Chiron Go Round TC	`TC`
JP	Japanese	Resource Han Rounded JP	`JP`
KR	Korean	Chiron Go Round TC, filtered to Korean ranges	`KR`

CJK builds are disabled by default. Use the CJK build configuration to select one or more locales, static or variable output, and optional compact spacing.

Preview

Generated with CodeImg
Theme: Maple
Configuration: 16px font size, 1.8 line height, default letter spacing

Getting Started

Download and Installation

Download the font archives from Releases.

You can also install Maple Mono through Scoop, Homebrew, AUR/Paru, NixPkgs, and other package managers. See the installation guide for details.

Usage and Feature Configuration

See the usage guide for usage and configuration instructions.

Naming and Font Selection

Maple Mono provides multiple font formats and character-set ranges in its releases based on user feedback. Choose the font file that fits your use case; see font selection for details.

CDN

Maple Mono

Maple Mono CN

Highlights

You can preview all highlights on the page#todo.

Custom Builds

Maple Mono provides highly customizable builds. Modify config.json or add command-line arguments to generate the font you need; see custom builds for details.

See the full build.py CLI reference.

Narrow Glyphs

V8 provides three character-width modes. Change the "width" field in config.json, or pass --width <mode> on the command line.

Available modes:

default: 600
narrow: 550
slim: 500

OpenType Feature Switches

OpenType features control built-in font variants and ligatures, and are supported by most modern operating systems, browsers, terminals, and editors. Enable or disable them to control ligatures and character styles.

Maple Mono provides many fine-grained OpenType features. To reduce configuration effort, builds support three handling modes (why):

enable: Force these features on without setting cvXX / ssXX / zero in the font feature configuration, similar to default ligatures.
disable: Remove these features from cvXX / ssXX / zero, so they remain inactive even if enabled manually.
ignore: Keep the default behavior unchanged.

Normal Preset

Maple Mono's default glyph design is distinctive and personalized, which may not suit every taste or use case. The --normal build preset provides glyphs similar to JetBrains Mono (0 has a slash in the middle instead of a dot).

Custom OpenType Features

Most fonts do not support custom OpenType features, while Maple Mono supports defining them programmatically.

By default, the Python modules in scripts/feature/ generate the OpenType feature code loaded during the build. Modify those modules to adjust behavior or customize labels. To edit .fea source files directly, pass --apply-fea-file to build.py; the build script will load source/features/{regular,italic}{_cn,}.fea.

Infinite Arrow Ligatures

Inspired by Fira Code and Cascadia Code, Maple Mono supports infinite arrow ligatures.

Infinite arrow support is enabled by default during builds. Set "infinite_arrow": false in config.json, or pass --no-infinite-arrow on the command line, to disable it. Pass --infinite-arrow to override a disabled configuration. Discuss issues in #508.

Standard Zero Feature

By default, 0 uses the slashed style, and enabling zero displays the dotted form. Use --standard-zero to restore the standard OpenType semantics: the default 0 is dotted, and enabling zero displays the slashed form.

Custom Line Height

Maple Mono's default line height is 1. Change the "line_height" field in config.json, or pass --line-height <value> on the command line. The final line height is calculated as (ascender - descender) * line_height.

Custom Unicode Mapping

If Maple Mono lacks a Unicode code point, the corresponding character may not render. Customize the mapping through the "codepoint_alias" field in config.json.

For example, map existing characters to other Unicode code points:

{
  "codepoint_alias": {
    "U+E000": "U+E001",
    "U+E002": "U+E003"
  }
}

Custom Weight Mapping

Change the weight of static fonts through the "weight_mapping" field in config.json.

For example, make the regular weight slightly thinner by lowering "weight_mapping.regular" from 400 to 350:

{
  "weight_mapping": {
    "thin": 100,
    "extralight": 200,
    "light": 300,
    "regular": 350,
    "semibold": 500,
    "medium": 600,
    "bold": 700,
    "extrabold": 800
  }
}

Custom Nerd Font Configuration

Maple Mono includes Nerd Font icons and follows its naming rules. By default, each icon uses a one-Latin-character advance width, while its glyph width may vary.

To make icons occupy one Latin-character width (Nerd Font Mono), set "nerd_font.mono": true in config.json, or add --nf-mono to the build arguments.
To use variable-width icons (Nerd Font Propo), set "nerd_font.propo": true in config.json, or add --nf-propo to the build arguments.

To customize font-patcher arguments, install fontforge (and possibly python3-fontforge). You may also need to change "nerd_font.extra_args" in config.json.

Argument Parsing Rules

Default arguments: -l --careful --outputdir dir

When "nerd_font.propo" is true, add --variable-width-glyphs.
When "nerd_font.mono" is true, add --mono.

CJK Version

CJK fonts are not generated by default. Enable the CJK build configuration to download the required base glyphs from the GitHub Release.

Narrow CJK Spacing

If only the CJK characters have too much spacing while Latin characters look correct, use the cjk.narrow build option or the --cjk-narrow command-line argument. This prevents the font from being recognized as strictly monospace.

See #249 for a preview and discussion.

To change Latin character width as well, use the --width option.

Centered Full-Width Punctuation

Maple Mono supports the cpct feature to center full-width punctuation, which is common in Traditional Chinese; you can also enable cv99 to force this behavior. See #150 for details.

GitHub Mirror

The build script automatically downloads required resources from GitHub. If a download fails, set github_mirror in config.json or set $GITHUB as an environment variable. The target URL format is https://<github_mirror>/<user>/<repo>/releases/download/<tag>/<file>; you can also download the target .zip file and place it next to build.py.

`build.py` CLI

usage: build.py [-h] [-v] [-d] [--debug] [-n] [--standard-zero] [--feat FEAT]
                [--apply-fea-file] [--hinted | --no-hinted]
                [--liga | --no-liga]
                [--infinite-arrow | --no-infinite-arrow] [--remove-tag-liga]
                [--line-height LINE_HEIGHT] [--width {default,narrow,slim}]
                [--format FORMATS] [--least-styles] [--cache] [--archive]
                [--nf | --no-nf] [--nf-mono] [--nf-propo] [--nf-variable]
                [--font-patcher] [--cjk CJK] [--cjk-variable] [--cjk-narrow]
                [--cjk-scale-factor CJK_SCALE_FACTOR] [--cjk-both]
                [--cjk-hinted | --no-cjk-hinted] [--cn | --no-cn]
                [--cn-narrow] [--cn-scale-factor CN_SCALE_FACTOR] [--cn-both]
Builder and optimizer for Maple Mono
options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit
  -d, --dry             Output config and exit
  --debug               Use a fast debug build: add `Debug`, enable debug
                        logging, build Regular/Italic only, and skip
                        OTF/WOFF2/Nerd Font outputs
Feature Options:
  -n, --normal          Use normal preset, just like `JetBrains Mono` with
                        slashed zero
  --standard-zero       Use standard zero semantics: default dotted zero and
                        slashed zero when `zero` is enabled
  --feat FEAT           Enable and freeze the listed features, split by `,`
                        (e.g. `--feat zero,cv01,ss07,ss08`); contextual rules
                        are enabled through `calt`
  --apply-fea-file      Apply matching
                        `source/features/{regular,italic}{_cn,}.fea` to static
                        and variable fonts
  --hinted              Use hinted font as base font in NF / CJK / NF-CJK
                        (default)
  --no-hinted           Use unhinted font as base font in NF / CJK / NF-CJK
  --liga                Preserve all the ligatures (default)
  --no-liga             Remove all the ligatures
  --infinite-arrow      Add infinite arrow ligature support (default)
  --no-infinite-arrow   Do not add infinite arrow ligature support
  --remove-tag-liga     Remove plain text tag ligatures like `[TODO]`
  --line-height LINE_HEIGHT
                        Scale factor for line height (e.g., 1.1)
  --width {default,narrow,slim}
                        Set glyph width: default (600), narrow (550), slim
                        (500)
Build Options:
  --format FORMATS      Select requested base output formats as a comma-
                        separated list: ttf,otf,woff2; the variable base is
                        always built
  --least-styles        Only build Regular / Bold / Italic / BoldItalic style
  --cache               Reuse valid cached pipeline stages under `fonts/` and
                        preserve existing unrelated outputs
  --archive             Archive each existing non-JSON output directory with
                        config and license
Nerd Font Options:
  --nf, --nerd-font     Build Nerd-Font version (default)
  --no-nf, --no-nerd-font
                        Do not build the Nerd-Font version
  --nf-mono             Make Nerd Font icons' width fixed
  --nf-propo            Make Nerd Font icons' width variable, override `--nf-
                        mono`
  --nf-variable         Build Nerd Font as a variable font
  --font-patcher        Force the use of Nerd Font Patcher to build NF format
CJK Options:
  --cjk CJK             Build Maple Mono + CJK extended fonts for locales: cn,
                        jp, tc, kr. Repeat or use comma-separated values.
  --cjk-variable        Persist CJK-extended output as merged variable fonts.
  --cjk-narrow          Apply narrow CJK spacing to the selected locales.
  --cjk-scale-factor CJK_SCALE_FACTOR
                        Scale factor for selected CJK locales. Format:
                        <factor> or <width_factor>,<height_factor>.
  --cjk-both            When Nerd Font is enabled, build both NF CJK and non-
                        NF CJK outputs.
  --cjk-hinted          Auto-hint final static CJK fonts.
  --no-cjk-hinted       Do not auto-hint final static CJK fonts (default).
Deprecated CN Options:
  --cn                  Deprecated alias for `--cjk cn`.
  --no-cn               Deprecated alias for removing `cn` from the selected
                        CJK locales.
  --cn-narrow           Deprecated alias for `--cjk-narrow` when targeting
                        `cn`.
  --cn-scale-factor CN_SCALE_FACTOR
                        Deprecated alias for `--cjk-scale-factor` when
                        targeting `cn`.
  --cn-both             Deprecated alias for `--cjk-both`.

Credits

Sponsorship

If this font is helpful to you, please consider sponsoring me through Afdian.

Star History

License

SIL Open Font License 1.1