New open source 'Cascadia Code' released for Windows Terminal

For all coders & developers - in their latest release for Windows Terminal, Microsoft has released a new open source Cascadia Code font package. Cascadia Code was announced this past May at Microsoft’s Build event. It is the latest monospaced font shipped from Microsoft and provides a fresh experience for command line experiences and code editors. Cascadia Code was developed hand-in-hand with the new Windows Terminal application. This font is most recommended to be used with terminal applications and text editors such as Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code.

Keep it Open Source. Keep it Free

The creators are excited that Cascadia Code has been licensed under the SIL Open Font license on GitHub, so feel free to contribute as you wish!

Why is it named Cascadia Code?

The name Cascadia Code originated from the Windows Terminal project. Before it was released, the codename for Windows Terminal was Cascadia. In fact, some of the source files within the Terminal still use this name! As an homage to the Terminal, we liked the idea of naming the font after its codename. They added Code to the end of the font name to help indicate that this font was intended for programming. Specifically, it helps identify that it includes programming ligatures.

To ensure Cascadia Code was the right choice for the font name, we held a poll on Twitter along with other names we were considering. We were very grateful for everyone’s participation and were so excited Cascadia Code came out as the winner. 😊

Who Designed Cascadia Code?

A huge thank you goes out to Aaron Bell, the designer of Cascadia Code. Aaron Bell is a font designer with his own company, Saja Typeworks, and has worked with Microsoft for many years. He was the designer of Selawik back in 2015! You can follow him on Twitter at @aaronbell and he will also be active in our GitHub repository. We plan to continue working with him to help improve Cascadia Code and make it a great font for everyone!

A great thank you also to Kayla Cinnamon, the project manager for the Windows terminal and their team. For any updates coming to Cascadia Code, feel free to keep an eye on the repo or follow Kayla (@cinnamon_msft) and Rich (@richturn_ms) on Twitter.


What’s Next for Cascadia Code?

As of today, Cascadia Code version 1909.16 is available publicly on GitHub. It’ll be following the Windows versioning syntax as the font receives updates with new and refined glyphs. You can install it directly from the GitHub repository’s releases page or automatically receive it in the next update of Windows Terminal.