Xcode 3.2 Daily Tip: Restoring Monaco
It's a Menlo world in the new Snow Leopard Xcode. 10.6's Xcode uses the Menlo Regular-11 font for the standard Xcode template. If you miss Monaco (and I know I did), it isn't hard to restore the look and feel of Xcode 10.5's defaults. That's not to say there's anything wrong with Menlo. Menlo is a lovely font. It's just not a familar font and some strange part of my brain keeps freaking out every time I look at the screen.
I'll probably force myself to adapt to Menlo at some point but for the moment, I'd rather just stick with Monaco. So to do that, here are some quick instructions. As you'll see you'll need to create a new theme based on the Xcode default theme and update its font settings.
To start, open Xcode > Xcode Preferences (Command-,). Choose Fonts & Colors. Select the Xcode Default theme and click Duplicate. Enter a name for the new theme (e.g. Normal Xcode Theme) and click OK. Select the new theme, and then select all categories within the theme. To do that, click on any item and then choose Edit > Select All (Command-A).
With the categories all selected, double-click in the font column. A font panel appears. Select Monaco 10 in the font panel and then close the panel. Click OK in the preferences pane and boom. You have returned to a font comfort zone.
Got any Xcode font preferences? Can you recommend a font that's better than Menlo, Monaco, or the good old standby Courier? Let us know in the comments.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Buckingham said 1:02PM on 9-04-2009
Does this even need an article?
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wififun said 1:11PM on 9-04-2009
@Buckingham
Nope, but Erica likes to hear herself talk.
VanillaSpice said 1:16AM on 9-07-2009
Does your failure to realise the popularity of this topic (see latter comments) justify a snarky comment like that? I think you just like to hear yourself talk.
Remember (if you can) that you are not the world. Other people are different. Your preferences and interests are not global. You may not be interested in this, but others are (again, see latter comments). Next time you want to declare that your opinion is everyone's opinion, do it somewhere else, okay?
gicmo said 1:07PM on 9-04-2009
People how need these instructions shouldn't be using Xcode. Seriously.
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Roberto said 1:10PM on 9-04-2009
I am looking forward for the daily Xcode tips that TUAW will bring to my browser, every day!
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Hjalti said 1:23PM on 9-04-2009
Inconsolata is my favorite.
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jasonmp85 said 1:25PM on 9-04-2009
It's 2009. I realized the retro-chicness of using a non-anti-aliased font was not worth the extra eyestrain. I haven't used Menlo much, but don't like the non-superscripted * character. I started using Inconsolata when it first came out and eventually just switched over to Consolas. Both are amazing and I will never go back to the much inferior Monaco.
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oZ said 3:09PM on 9-04-2009
Blasphemy. Consolas is great over on the Windows platform, but looks like warmed-over ass on OS X. Long live Monaco 11, anti aliased and everything.
Luigi193 said 2:13PM on 9-05-2009
Monaco 11 anti-aliased is my favorite font EVER. I use it for my email and AIM and TextEdit just because I love the way it looks!!!
It is definitely a developer font, I don't know if everyone feels the same love towards it...
dan said 1:32PM on 9-04-2009
Consolas is great! Many thanks for the tip
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ryemac3 said 2:21PM on 9-04-2009
It's that centered asterisk you get like in "UIButton *MyButton;" that kept freaking me out. Why is it centered?
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Jason Boehle said 1:52PM on 9-04-2009
I just wish Xcode 3.2 didn't flash the whole editor when using the Dusk color scheme and typing.
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roberto said 2:05PM on 9-04-2009
I use Pragmata font on terminal, textmate and the flash actionscript editor, much more readable. Didn't like Menlo.
My 2 cents.
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Chris said 2:25PM on 9-04-2009
For my money the best (almost) font for monospaced type is Droid Sans Mono from google.
The biggest complaint I have with it is that the zero and "oh" are too similar for my tastes, and I have talked with many who share that concern.
I opened Droid Sans in Font Forge and created two derivative fonts, one with a slash zero and one with a dot zero and renamed it AstroMech.
I use Astromech Mono Dot Zero everywhere mono fonts are used.
http://github.com/ct/astromech/tree/master
I may have to buy Droid Pro to get the bold version and re-add the dot zero. That one I won't distribute though.
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James Elliott said 2:25PM on 9-04-2009
I use TheSansMono for code and terminal contexts; it’s what O’Reilly uses in their books. I bought it when I was working on Java Swing and wanted a more accurate preview of what listings would look like, and ended up sticking with it for other things too.
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Konstantin G. said 3:03PM on 9-04-2009
Guys, forget Menlo, Monaco & co.. read this: http://hivelogic.com/articles/anonymous-pro-programming-monospace-font/
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Posimotion said 4:01PM on 9-04-2009
Wow! That is incredibly easy and a definite need. We have been looking at this since we updated ourselves last Friday. Thought it was going to be a life long font hatred (and I have never had that before), but thanks TUAW.
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MannyV said 4:33PM on 9-04-2009
ProFont is stil the best.
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Twist said 6:26PM on 9-04-2009
As someone else mentioned Anonymous Pro is nice, but I really like the Panic Sans font that ships with Coda.
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Jason Anderson said 7:56PM on 9-04-2009
Personally I use Andale Mono at 10pt in TextWrangler.
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