pico fonts

A collection of pixel fonts for various purposes.

picomono typeface

7x13 pixel font: minimal font size that is still very usable for writing code.

picotype typeface

5x8 pixel font: minimal font size to not have ambiguities, and support multiple weights.

picotypepro typeface

5x10 pixel font: a minimal legible font size to to ensure consistent baseline for better legibility.

picosans typeface

8x16 monospace sans serif pixel font with an italic version.

truly tiny fonts: micro, nano, pico, and femto

picomicro typeface

3x7 pixel font: a minimal font size that is still legible for both upper and lower case letters, numbers, and all the ASCII symbols. No ambiguities, and straight baseline.

piconano typeface

3x5 pixel font: a minimal font size that is still legible for upper and lower case letters, as well as numbers. Some other ASCII symbols are OK. No ambiguities.

picopico typeface

3x4 pixel font: a minimal font size that is still legible for upper and most of the lower case letters, as well as numbers. Very few other ASCII symbols look OK. No ambiguities.

picofemto typeface

3x3 pixel font: a minimal font size that is still somewhat legible for upper and some lower case letters and numbers, however it introduces some ambiguity (same glyphs for Z, z, and 2; T and t; 1 and l; Q and q; G and g; O and o, K and k, etc.).

Nerdfonts

All typefaces have a nerd font patched version. Patched with the complete icon set.

OS Installation

1. Download the font files from the latest release, or from the /build directory
2. Install the fonts on your system:
   • macOS: Double-click the font files or use Font Book
   • Linux: Copy to ~/.local/share/fonts/ and run fc-cache -f -v
   • Windows: Right-click and select "Install"

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

If you want to add a new font, you should add it to the ./src folder. The ./src folder structure is the following:

📁 familyname/
├── 📁 regular/
│   └── familyname-regular.ttf
├── 📁 italic/
│   └── familyname-italic.ttf
├── 📁 bold/
│   └── familyname-bold.ttf
└── 📁 bolditalic/
    └── familyname-bolditalic.ttf

That is it! Once the PR is in, I will run the build script locally (CI will be added)

If you want to run the build youself you can optionally do so too:

To properly build the new font you will need:

• FontForge with Python bindings (brew install fontforge on macOS, or sudo apt-get install fontforge on Linux)
• Python 3

Then run ./build.sh — an interactive script that will:

1. Let you select which font families to build (space to toggle, a to select all)
2. Configure metadata options (naming, font type, version bump, line height)
3. Optionally add OpenType features (small caps, old-style figures)
4. Optionally patch with Nerd Fonts icons

The script adds proper metadata so that the OS recognizes all the different files as belonging to the same font family.

Manual editing in FontForge

1. Install FontForge
2. Open the font in FontForge
3. Element → Font Info...
4. General tab:

• Fontname: unique font name including the font family and the variant. E.g. Helvetica Regular
• Font Family: only the font family that needs to be the same on all fonts. E.g. Helvetica
• Name for Humans: just use same as font family

5. TTF Names tab:

• <New> → English (US) → Preferred Family → e.g. Helvetica
• <New> → English (US) → Preferred Styles → e.g. Regular
• if you changed the Fontname, update the UniqueID as well

6. File → Generate Fonts...

• check validate before saving
• use TrueType
• No BitMap Fonts
• Generate

Patching to nerd fonts

Install python (brew install python on mac)

run ./generate

This will generate the nerd fonts and put them in the /build directory.

Manual patching command:

fontforge --script ./patcher/font-patcher --careful --mono --complete --simple ./picotype/picotype-regular.ttf

the --simple argument preservers the lowercase convention of all pico fonts so you don't need to use fontforge again