Nerd Fonts in the terminal: what they are and how to install one

If a prompt or status line shows boxes where there should be icons or rounded ends, you are missing a Nerd Font. The Nerd Fonts project takes popular programming fonts and adds thousands of glyphs to them, from file icons to the half circles that make pill-shaped segments.

Install one

# macOS, with Homebrew
brew install --cask font-jetbrains-mono-nerd-font

# Linux: download from nerdfonts.com, then
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/fonts && unzip JetBrainsMono.zip -d ~/.local/share/fonts
fc-cache -f

JetBrains Mono, Fira Code, Hack and Meslo are common choices. Pick the one you would use anyway; the letters are unchanged.

Set it in your terminal

• iTerm2: Settings, Profiles, Text, Font.
• Ghostty, WezTerm, Kitty, Alacritty: the font-family line in their config file.
• VS Code terminal: set terminal.integrated.fontFamily to the font's name, such as "JetBrainsMono Nerd Font".

Check it

printf '\ue0b6 capsule \ue0b4\n'

Those two code points are the left and right half circles. If you see a pill shape around the word, the font works. If you see boxes, the terminal is still using another font.

Without one

Good tools degrade: square ends instead of round, text labels instead of icons. That is a fine setup, and one fewer dependency on a new machine. Colour depth is a separate check, covered in 24-bit colour, and themes in status line themes.

Capsule Status Line uses a Nerd Font only for its rounded capsule ends, and works without one; the Nerd Font is optional in its requirements.