Why doesn't Ghostty show my font?

[nathanmsmith]

I use the Dank Mono font, but it doesn't show up when I run ghostty +list-fonts. Other terminal emulators like iTerm and Kitty pick up the font fine. How does Ghostty decide which fonts to support? Is there a way for it to use Dank Mono?

[rhodes-b]

what system are you on

[nathanmsmith]

macOS 15.2

[profbbrown]

I noticed this, too, with SF Mono Nerd Font. Even though it's configured as the terminal font, it doesn't show up in +list-fonts.

[ardupper]

Try going in to Font Book and checking if the Dank Mono font is part of the "Fixed Width" Smart Collection. I've struggled to find much good documentation of precisely how a font gets marked as fixed width, but on my system the list of fonts marked fixed width and the list of fonts under ghostty +list-fonts is identical.

Hope this helps

[ardupper]

macOS 15.1.1, btw

[nathanmsmith]

Dank Mono is not part of the "Fixed Width" collection! I went down a bit of a rabbit hole here – a stack exchange user thought that fixed width fonts are decided by PANOSE values.

I checked Dank Mono with the ttx utility and it had values of all 0. I edited this to be Family Kind=2, Proportion=9 (monospace), reinstalled the font, and restarted my computer. No luck.

Then after some more experimenting, I found that Ghostty does support the font, using the line:

font-family = Dank Mono

This is despite the fact that Dank Mono does not show up in ghostty +list-fonts. This appears to work for any font; if you love chaos try out font-family = Comic Sans MS. I'm not sure if this is intended behavior or not, the Ghostty config file implies that only fonts listed by +list-fonts are valid.

[ardupper]

I bet it is intended behavior because there a features like smart kerning and ... ligatures make them slightly fancier than a true "monospaced" font, but they're still perfect for terminal use. I had the same thoughts as you after reading the documentation.

[mohd-akram]

I don't see "SF Mono" when doing ghostty +list-fonts. I'm on macOS 15.2. This is all I get:

Andale Mono
  Andale Mono

Courier New
  Courier New
  Courier New Bold
  Courier New Bold Italic
  Courier New Italic

Menlo
  Menlo Bold
  Menlo Bold Italic
  Menlo Italic
  Menlo Regular

Monaco
  Monaco

PT Mono
  PT Mono
  PT Mono Bold

[lemomar]

Did you find a solution for this?

[leonasdev]

macOS do not have SF Mono by default. You need to download it from: https://developer.apple.com/fonts/

[magnusriga]

I am having the same problem, just with "JetBrainsMono Nerd Font".

It does not show up when running +list-fonts, and it also does not work when adding it to the config.

[magnusriga]

I now added adjust-cell-height = 5%, and tweaked padding, to get the two terminals as similar as possible. The thickness difference is now even clearer:

I tried font-thicken, but that made the font way too thick.

Can it really be the same font? Each character is visibly taller in WezTerm.

As it currently stands, each character starts at the same top-line in both terminals, but WezTerm just stretches a bit taller (without pushing the next line further down).

Thoughts or ideas appreciated :)

[rhodes-b]

yes, not all terminals render fonts the exact same way, you will notice differences in wezterm and kitty as well. thickness is not defined by a font rather the stroke of how characters look the characters look the same so yes its the same font

[VPraharsha03]

@rhodes-b
I'm trying to use JetBrainsMono Nerd Font Mono in ghostty but it clearly looks like it's not being applied and ghostty continues to use it's own baked in font, it works perfectly on konsole & kitty - it's clear from the fact that ghostty is able to display the nobara's logo (because ghostty is using newer NF) but kitty & konsole are not able to display nobara's unicode as i'm using an older version of JBMono NF Mono

The issue i'm experiencing is the space after icon and text, on ghostty there is no space but on kitty and konsole spacing appears correctly...

konsole:

ghostty:

ghostty config:

[danielwe]

ghostty is able to display the nobara's logo (because ghostty is using newer NF)

This is due to fallbacks. Ghostty has a built-in font that provides this icon, so it will always be able to display it, no matter what your primary font is. This isn't just for nerd fonts---if your primary font doesn't provide a codepoint, Ghostty will always do its best to find a fallback font that does.

The issue i'm experiencing is the space after icon and text, on ghostty there is no space

What version of Ghostty are you on? If you upgrade to the most recent release, 1.2.2, I think this should be fixed.

[VPraharsha03]

I'm on 1.2.0, will try upgrading and see

EDIT: upgraded to 1.2.2 and issue got solved

[mariansam]

If anyone comes here because Ghostty (on Linux) opens without rendering anything and ghostty +list-fonts returns nothing: run fc-cache -fv to rebuild the font cache and try again.