Moon phase emojis (U+1F311..U+1F318) render as blank in Ghostty on Linux (visible in Kitty)

[malikwirin]

Hi folks — I’m trying to understand whether what I’m seeing is expected behavior, config-related, or a potential bug in Ghostty’s emoji/font fallback path on Linux. I first encountered this issue as described in issue chubin/wttr.in#1199.

What I’m observing

On my Linux setup, the moon phase emojis 🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘 (U+1F311..U+1F318) render as blank cells in Ghostty (effectively invisible / whitespace-like). On the same machine, with the same general font environment, the same string is visible in Kitty. So this is not just “wrong style” (text vs color), but specifically “not visible at all”.

Quick repro

In Ghostty:

printf '%s\n' '🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘'

Result for me: blank/invisible cells.

In Kitty, running the same command: glyphs are visible.

Environment

• OS: NixOS (Linux)
• Config management: Nix + Home Manager
• Theming/font setup: Stylix (Home Manager)
• Shell: zsh
• Ghostty installed/enabled via Home Manager

Relevant Home Manager config

programs.ghostty = {
  enable = true;
  enableZshIntegration = true;
};
stylix = {
  enable = true;
  fonts = {
    monospace = {
      package = pkgs.nerd-fonts.jetbrains-mono;
      name = "JetBrainsMono Nerd Font";
    };
    emoji = {
      package = pkgs.noto-fonts-color-emoji;
      name = "Noto Color Emoji";
    };
    sizes.terminal = 17;
  };
};

Related threads I found

I checked these, but I’m not sure they cover this exact behavior:

• Handling of Emoji without a Text or Graphical Selector on Linux and macOS #4921
• Issues with emojis #3721
• Respect user's fontconfig settings for emoji fonts #7312

---

My case seems narrower: these specific moon codepoints show up as blanks in Ghostty.
What I’m asking

• Is this expected with current Ghostty behavior on Linux?
• If not expected, does this sound like an issue worth filing after this discussion?
• If there’s already an exact duplicate thread/issue, I’m happy to move there.
  Thanks!

[AnthonyZhOon]

With Noto Color Emoji installed on fedora linux I get both working.
You can check the fallback fonts used by ghostty and kitty as follows:

~> ghostty +show-face --string="🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘"
U+1F311 « 🌑 » found in face “Noto Color Emoji”.
U+1F312 « 🌒 » found in face “Noto Color Emoji”.
U+1F313 « 🌓 » found in face “Noto Color Emoji”.
U+1F314 « 🌔 » found in face “Noto Color Emoji”.
U+1F315 « 🌕 » found in face “Noto Color Emoji”.
U+1F316 « 🌖 » found in face “Noto Color Emoji”.
U+1F317 « 🌗 » found in face “Noto Color Emoji”.
U+1F318 « 🌘 » found in face “Noto Color Emoji”.

For kitty run kitty --debug-font-fallback from a terminal and the font fallback will show up as debug logs

~$ kitty --debug-font-fallback
[0.411] Text fonts:
[0.411]   Normal: FantasqueSansMNFM-Bold: /home/fedora/.local/share/fonts/FantasqueSansMono/FantasqueSansMNerdFontMono-Bold.ttf:0
Features: ()
[0.411]   Bold: FantasqueSansMNFM-Regular: /home/fedora/.local/share/fonts/FantasqueSansMono/FantasqueSansMNerdFontMono-Regular.ttf:0
Features: ()
[0.411]   Italic: FantasqueSansMNFM-Italic: /home/fedora/.local/share/fonts/FantasqueSansMono/FantasqueSansMNerdFontMono-Italic.ttf:0
Features: ()
[0.411]   Bold-Italic: FantasqueSansMNFM-BoldItalic: /home/fedora/.local/share/fonts/FantasqueSansMono/FantasqueSansMNerdFontMono-BoldItalic.ttf:0
Features: ()
[0.472] [PARSE ERROR] Ignoring OSC 3008, used by systemd for OSC-context
[10.611] U+1f311 emoji_presentation Face(family=Noto Color Emoji style=Regular ps_name=NotoColorEmoji path=/usr/share/fonts/google-noto-color-emoji-fonts/Noto-COLRv1.ttf ttc_index=0 variant=False named_instance=False scalable=True color=True)
[10.613] U+1f312 emoji_presentation using previous fallback font at index: 0
[10.615] U+1f313 emoji_presentation using previous fallback font at index: 0
[10.617] U+1f314 emoji_presentation using previous fallback font at index: 0
[10.619] U+1f315 emoji_presentation using previous fallback font at index: 0
[10.620] U+1f316 emoji_presentation using previous fallback font at index: 0
[10.621] U+1f317 emoji_presentation using previous fallback font at index: 0
[10.623] U+1f318 emoji_presentation using previous fallback font at index: 0

You can also explicitly configure fallback fonts in by providing multiple font-family lines in the ghostty config, though I didn't need this for Noto Color Emoji. But maybe you have another font on your system that ghostty is detecting wrongly instead of NotoColorEmoji?

[elbaro]

This is a Ghostty bug failing to render COLRv1.

Use the bitmap version of Noto Color Emoji.

pop-os/cosmic-epoch#2546