Google Sans Code font blends tech and history to boost readability

Google has released a new font called Sans Code that is designed for developers and blends tech and history to boost readability.

If you spend your days staring at lines of code, you know that the little things can make a huge difference. The right chair, the right coffee, and definitely, the right font.

Google hasn’t just churned out another generic monospaced font. They’ve clearly put some serious thought into this. It’s based on their main “Google Sans” font, so it feels familiar, but it’s been completely re-engineered specifically for programming.

So, what’s the big deal? It all comes down to clarity. When you’re scanning through hundreds of lines of code, you don’t want to be squinting.

Google’s font designers have focused on making every single character as clear as possible, especially at the smaller sizes we tend to use in our code editors. They’ve done this by making the spaces inside letters like ‘o’, ‘a’, and ‘p’ bigger, which really helps them stand out.

They’ve also tackled one of the biggest annoyances for developers: characters that look too similar. You know the ones – the ‘l’ that looks like a ‘1’, or the ‘O’ that could be a ‘0’. They’ve given letters like ‘a’ and ‘g’ more traditional, distinct shapes so you can tell them apart in a split second. It’s a small change that saves a lot of mental energy.

But the part I find really fascinating is the italics. In most code editors, comments are shown in italics, and Google has leaned into this with its new font. Instead of just slanting the normal font, they’ve created a completely different, more flowing italic style. It makes the comments properly stand out from the functional code.

The design is inspired by the handwriting of a 16th-century Italian scribe. It sounds a bit random, but the logic is sound. Back then, a writer’s notes or annotations in the margin would be in a distinct script to separate them from the main text. That’s exactly what code comments are – our notes in the margin. It’s a nod to history that actually still makes perfect sense today.

Naturally, Google Sans Code has all the symbols and characters you need in a font for modern languages, plus extras like box-drawing symbols for terminal apps. It’s a real workhorse.

At the end of the day, a font designed for code that’s easy on the eyes and created with a deep understanding of what developers actually need can make the whole process feel that little bit smoother.

(Image credit: Google)

See also: Mistral launches full AI coding stack alongside Codestral 25.08

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