How to show -> and => as special characters in the IntelliJ Idea IDE?

Question

How can I show some symbols as special characters in the IntelliJ editor (for the Rust and Java languages), for example -> as →?

Answer 1

You are searching for font ligatures.

In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined as a single glyph. An example is the character æ as used in English, in which the letters a and e are joined.

IntelliJ supports this by default in the Settings -> Editor -> Font -> Enable font ligatures:

Fonts supporting ligatures I'm aware of are:

• Fira Code
• Iosevka
• Hasklig
• PragmataPro
• monoid
• Ligaturizer

Answer 2

You're going to want to use a font which supports ligatures, such as Fira Code: https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode