Enable font ligatures in Visual Studio 2026

Font ligatures are a cognitive boost for developers when reading code inside an IDE.

What are font ligatures

Font ligatures are special glyphs that combine multiple characters into a single, elegant symbol. For example, =>, ===, or != can appear as smooth connected symbols instead of separate characters. They don’t change your code—just make it more readable and visually appealing.

• 🎨 Aesthetic boost – Makes your code look clean and modern without changing functionality.
• 👁️ Better readability – Reduces visual clutter, making code easier on the eyes.
• 🔍 Clearer syntax – Turns multi-character operators like => or === into neat symbols for quick recognition.
• ⚡ Faster comprehension – Helps spot patterns and logic flow at a glance.

In case you want to enable Font ligatures inside VS 2026, Visual Studio 2026, you actually have to resort to running a Powershell script or similar to alter the registry a bit.

EnableFonLigatures.ps1 | Powershell

# Enable Font Ligatures for Visual 2026 (18.x)
$basePath = "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio"
$targetPrefixes = @("18.0_")
foreach ($prefix in $targetPrefixes) {
    $vsKeys = Get-ChildItem -Path $basePath | Where-Object { $_.PSChildName -like "$prefix*" }
    if ($vsKeys.Count -eq 0) {
        Write-Host "No keys found for prefix $prefix. Open Visual Studio and change Fonts & Colors once, then rerun."
    } else {
        foreach ($key in $vsKeys) {
            $fontColorsPath = Join-Path $key.PSPath "FontAndColors\Text Editor"
            
            # Create the path if missing
            if (-not (Test-Path $fontColorsPath)) {
                Write-Host "Creating missing path: $fontColorsPath"
                New-Item -Path $fontColorsPath -Force | Out-Null
            }
            # Set EnableFontLigatures to 1
            Set-ItemProperty -Path $fontColorsPath -Name "EnableFontLigatures" -Value 1 -Type DWord
            Write-Host "Ligatures enabled for: $fontColorsPath"
        }
    }
}

The following screenshot shows two ligatures symbols. Note the special symbols for => ('goes to') and != ('not equals') that are combined into one elegant symbol, which is more readable for the reader.

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