ryanoasis/nerd-fonts

★ 63,029CSSAudience · developerComplexity · 2/5MaintainedLicenseSetup · easy

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Patches fonts with icons
      Adds 10000+ glyphs
      Solves blank squares
    Icon sources
      Font Awesome
      Material Design
      Devicons
      Octicons
    Use cases
      Terminal prompts
      File managers
      Vim plugins
      Status bars
    Getting fonts
      Download pre-patched
      Patch your own
      Package managers
    Supported fonts
      Hack
      JetBrains Mono
      Fira Code
      Cascadia Code

mindmap root((repo)) What it does Patches fonts with icons Adds 10000+ glyphs Solves blank squares Icon sources Font Awesome Material Design Devicons Octicons Use cases Terminal prompts File managers Vim plugins Status bars Getting fonts Download pre-patched Patch your own Package managers Supported fonts Hack JetBrains Mono Fira Code Cascadia Code

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Install a patched font to display file type icons in your terminal file manager or prompt.

USE CASE 2

Patch your favorite coding font with developer icons using the included FontForge script.

USE CASE 3

Enable Vim devicons or other terminal plugins to show proper symbols instead of blank squares.

USE CASE 4

Customize your shell prompt to display git branch icons and system status glyphs.

Tech stack

CSSPythonFontForge

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

MIT License, use freely for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you keep the copyright notice.

In plain English

Nerd Fonts is a project that takes popular programming fonts and patches them to include thousands of additional icons and symbols useful to developers. The problem it solves is that many developer tools, particularly terminal prompt frameworks, file managers, status bars, and plugins like Vim's devicons, want to display icons such as file type icons, git branch symbols, programming language logos, and system status glyphs in the terminal. But standard fonts do not include these symbols, so the icons either show up as blank squares or require installing custom symbol-only fonts alongside your regular font. Nerd Fonts solves this by taking well-loved coding fonts like Hack, Cascadia Code, JetBrains Mono, Source Code Pro, Fira Code, and many others, and injecting over 10,000 icon glyphs into the unused unicode code point slots of each font. The icons come from icon collections like Font Awesome, Material Design Icons, Devicons, GitHub's Octicons, and others. The result is a single patched font that contains both the readable text characters you type and the icons your terminal tools want to display. Over 60 pre-patched font families are available for download directly. For fonts not already patched, the project provides a FontForge Python script that can patch any font you supply. Installation options include downloading release archives, using Homebrew on macOS, Chocolatey or Scoop on Windows, or Arch Linux's package repositories. The repo notes that cloning the full repository is not recommended due to the enormous size of the included font files. The tech stack is primarily CSS and Python scripting for the patcher.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

I want to use Nerd Fonts in my terminal. Which pre-patched font should I download and how do I install it on macOS?

Prompt 2

How do I use the Nerd Fonts patcher script to add icons to my own custom font file?

Prompt 3

Show me how to configure my shell prompt to use Nerd Fonts icons for git status and file types.

Prompt 4

What icon sets are included in Nerd Fonts and how do I find the unicode character for a specific icon I want to use?

Prompt 5

I'm setting up Vim with devicons, which Nerd Font should I install and how do I configure it?

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Generated 2026-05-18 · Model: sonnet-4-6 · Verify against the repo before relying on details.