Symbols Nerd Font
Not a typeface — the icon half of every Nerd Font, packaged so any font can borrow it.
What it does
A Nerd Font build is the upstream typeface plus several thousand icon glyphs in the Private Use Area. Symbols Nerd Font is that second half on its own: the Font Awesome, Devicon, Octicon, Material, Weather and Powerline sets, with no Latin alphabet at all.
That makes it the answer for any font with no patched build — a paid family like MonoLisa, something new like Google Sans Code, or a face you drew yourself. Set it as the fallback, and the icons resolve to it while every ordinary character still comes from the font you chose.
Setting it as the fallback
| Application | How |
|---|---|
| iTerm2 | Profiles → Text → Use a different font for non-ASCII text, then pick Symbols Nerd Font Mono |
| Ghostty | font-family = MonoLisa then font-family = Symbols Nerd Font Mono on the next line — later entries are fallbacks |
| kitty | symbol_map U+E000-U+F8FF,U+F0000-U+FFFFD,U+100000-U+10FFFD Symbols Nerd Font Mono |
| WezTerm | font = wezterm.font_with_fallback { "MonoLisa", "Symbols Nerd Font Mono" } |
| VS Code | "editor.fontFamily": "MonoLisa, 'Symbols Nerd Font Mono', monospace" |
| Alacritty | No fallback configuration — use a patched font instead |
Notes
- Install the Mono variant for terminals. The proportional one puts double-width icons in single cells and breaks column alignment, which is the same trap as with any other Nerd Font.
- The
symbol_mapranges above are the Private Use blocks the glyphs actually live in. Mapping the whole of the PUA to this font is deliberate — nothing else should be drawing from there. - A patched family is still simpler where one exists. This is for the cases where one does not.
Alternative to
| Alternative | Type | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Any patched Nerd Font | Open source | One font, no fallback configuration, no choice of typeface |
| The Nerd Fonts patcher | Open source | Patch a font yourself; fine privately, rarely licensed to share |
| Powerline fonts | Open source | Only the separators and branch glyphs, which most prompts outgrew |
| Turning the icons off in the tool | — | lsd --icon never, and a prompt preset without glyphs |
Install
brew install --cask font-symbols-only-nerd-font