Skip to content

feat: add fonts utility for listing available system fonts #98

@joshukraine

Description

@joshukraine

Feature Request

Add a fonts command-line utility to easily list and search available system fonts.

Motivation

Currently, to check available fonts for terminal configuration, users need to remember complex fc-list commands with various pipes and filters. A simple fonts utility would improve the developer experience.

Proposed Solution

Create a script at bin/fonts that provides an intuitive interface for font discovery:

# List all fonts
fonts

# List monospace fonts (useful for terminals)
fonts -m
fonts --mono

# List Nerd Fonts (for icon support)
fonts -n
fonts --nerd

# Search fonts by pattern
fonts cascadia
fonts -m jet    # monospace fonts matching "jet"

Implementation Details

  • Standalone bash script in bin/ directory
  • Uses fc-list under the hood with appropriate filters
  • Supports options for monospace (-m) and Nerd Fonts (-n)
  • Accepts optional search pattern
  • Includes built-in help (-h, --help)
  • Clean, sorted, deduplicated output

Benefits

  1. Discoverability: Simple command name that's easy to remember
  2. Flexibility: Filter by font type and search pattern
  3. Terminal-focused: Special support for monospace and Nerd Fonts
  4. Self-documenting: Built-in help with examples

Integration

Once implemented, update configuration file comments (e.g., in ghostty config) to reference this utility instead of raw fc-list commands.

Reference Implementation

See scratchpads/notes/fonts-utility-20250128.md for the full implementation.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions