The default proportional font (used in the Settings and to render Markdown) is hard to read

[tredondo]

Pre-submit Checks

• I have searched Warp feature requests and there are no duplicates
• I have searched Warp docs and my feature is not there

Describe the solution you'd like?

The default font of Markdown previews looked too cramped to me, and difficult to read. The same font is used in the Warp Settings.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I took a screenshot of Warp's rendering of its own README.md, side by side with GitHub, and asked Claude to analyze the readability of the text.

Below is the raw reply.

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Looking at the two renderings side by side, the right version is significantly more readable. Here's a breakdown of why:

Key Differences

1. GitHub-style alert/admonition rendering

• Left: The > [!TIP] syntax is rendered literally as raw markdown text with blockquote markers (>), leaving the user to mentally parse what it means.
• Right: It's rendered as a proper styled callout — a green vertical accent bar, a 💡 icon, and a "Tip" label. This instantly communicates "this is supplementary advice, not part of the main flow."

2. Typography and spacing

• Right: Generous line-height, comfortable paragraph spacing, and what looks like a slightly larger or better-hinted font. Text feels airy.
• Left: Tighter line-height and cramped paragraph gaps make the wall of text harder to scan. The eye doesn't get natural resting points.

3. Line length and measure

• Right: Wider column, but still within a comfortable reading measure. Fewer awkward line breaks mid-thought (e.g., "ad-hoc" gets hyphenated across a line on the left).
• Left: Narrower column forces more wrapping, including the unfortunate ad-/hoc hyphenation, which interrupts reading flow.

4. Inline code styling

• Both render inline code (#oss-contributors, ready-to-spec) with a pill background, but on the right the contrast and padding feel more deliberate, making the tokens pop without being noisy.

5. Visual hierarchy

• Right: Headings (Open Source & Contributing, Issue to PR, Building the Repo Locally) feel weightier relative to body text, creating clearer section boundaries.
• Left: Headings are present but the overall density flattens the hierarchy.

Summary

The right rendering wins on semantic fidelity (proper alert blocks instead of raw [!TIP]), typographic comfort (line-height, measure), and scannability (clearer hierarchy, fewer awkward wraps). The left rendering is functional but feels like a viewer that hasn't kept up with modern GitHub-flavored Markdown extensions — particularly the alert syntax, which is now a pretty common expectation.

If these are two versions of the same Markdown viewer, the right one is the one I'd ship.

Additional context

No response

Operating system (OS)

Linux

How important is this feature to you?

3

Warp Internal (ignore) - linear-label:39cc6478-1249-4ee7-950b-c428edfeecd1

None

[oz-for-oss]

@tredondo

Here's what I found while triaging this issue:

Thanks for the detailed screenshot. This looks like a distinct readability enhancement covering both Warp's shared proportional UI font and Markdown rendering; related requests exist for Markdown styling and richer GitHub-flavored Markdown support, but I did not find enough overlap to mark this as a duplicate.

Maintainer details

I concluded that enhancement request to improve the readability of Warp's shared proportional/UI font and Markdown rendering, especially for Settings and README-style Markdown previews..

Triage summary

This is an enhancement request with an accessibility/readability angle. The reported surface spans both Markdown rendering and the Settings UI, which share the app's proportional/UI typography rather than terminal monospace typography.

Evidence and likely code path

• The attached screenshot is enough to see the reported density/readability difference against GitHub's rendering of the same README content.
• README.md contains GitHub alert syntax such as > [!NOTE] and > [!TIP], matching the reporter's example.
• app/src/appearance.rs loads bundled Roboto as the default UI font on non-Windows platforms, while crates/warp_core/src/ui/appearance.rs and crates/warp_core/src/ui/builder.rs expose that font to shared UI controls.
• app/src/notebooks/editor/mod.rs builds Markdown/notebook rich text styles from appearance.ui_font_family() with fixed notebook line-height and spacing constants; crates/editor/src/render/model/mod.rs defines the default Markdown block spacing.
• crates/markdown_parser/src/markdown_parser.rs handles headings, lists, images, tables, code blocks, and paragraphs, but there is no blockquote or GitHub alert/callout block type, so callout syntax falls back to plain paragraph-style rendering.

Duplicate check

I did not find two existing open issues that are likely duplicates of this combined request. Related but not exact matches include #6547 for Markdown preview CSS/styling controls, #9024 for richer Markdown rendering including callouts/blockquotes, and #929 for replacing Roboto in window chrome.

Suggested next step

This likely needs design/product direction before implementation: decide whether the desired change is a new default proportional font/spacing, user-configurable UI/Markdown typography, GitHub-style Markdown callout support, or some combination of those.

This is my automated analysis and may be incorrect. A maintainer will verify the details.

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