Install a Nerd Font

Get beautiful icons and symbols in your terminal

Nerd Fonts are developer-friendly fonts that include icons for programming languages, git status, file types, and more. Many modern terminal tools (like Starship prompt) use these icons to provide a richer visual experience.

Why do this first?

You install fonts on Windows, not inside WSL. Doing this before setting up WSL means your terminal will display correctly from the start.

Download a Nerd Font

We recommend JetBrainsMono Nerd Font - it's clean, readable, and designed for code.

  1. Go to the Nerd Fonts download page
  2. Find JetBrainsMono and click the download button
  3. Extract the downloaded ZIP file

Install the Font

  1. Open the extracted folder
  2. Select all the .ttf files (press Ctrl+A)
  3. Right-click and select "Install for all users"

Verify Installation

To check if the font installed correctly:

  1. Open Settings > Personalisation > Fonts
  2. Search for "JetBrains"
  3. You should see "JetBrainsMono Nerd Font" in the list

Alternative Fonts

Other popular Nerd Font options:

Font Style
FiraCode Popular, includes coding ligatures
CascadiaCode Microsoft's font, great Windows integration
Hack Clean and simple