A terminal UI icon picker for emoji, kaomoji, Unicode characters, and Nerd Font glyphs. Press Enter to print the selected icon to stdout; press Esc to exit without output.

[!TIP] Want to use latuicon in Neovim? Check out the latuicon.nvim wrapper plugin!

Table of Contents

• Install
  • Nix
  • Cargo
  • Arch Linux (AUR)
  • Build from source
  • Nix development environment
• Usage
  • Keybindings
  • Tabs
  • Desktop integration example (Hyprland)
• Configuration
  • Themes
  • Default tab
  • Search mode
  • Tabs
  • Custom kaomoji
• What's the relationship with late.sh?

Install

Nix

Run without installing:

nix run github:coko7/latuicon

Or install it into your Nix profile:

nix profile add github:coko7/latuicon

Cargo

Install the latuicon bin crate:

cargo install latuicon

Arch Linux (AUR)

Install the latuicon AUR package:

$ yay -S latuicon
# or
$ paru -S latuicon

Build from source

./scripts/deploy.sh

Builds a release binary and installs it to ~/.local/bin/latuicon.

Nix development environment

The flake also provides the Rust toolchain, Clippy, rustfmt, and rust-analyzer for contributors:

nix develop
nix flake check

Usage

latuicon                          # default theme, opens on emoji tab

latuicon --theme mocha            # specific theme
LATUICON_THEME=dracula latuicon

latuicon --default-tab unicode    # sets default tab (all, emoji, kaomoji, unicode, nerd font)
LATUICON_DEFAULT_TAB=nerd latuicon

latuicon --search-mode simple     # substring-only search (default: fuzzy)
LATUICON_SEARCH=fuzzy latuicon

latuicon --tabs "nerd-font,emoji,all,kaomoji,unicode"  # reorder tab strip / Tab cycling
LATUICON_TABS="nerd-font,emoji,all,kaomoji,unicode" latuicon

latuicon --tabs "emoji,kaomoji"   # only enable emoji and kaomoji tabs

Prints the chosen icon to stdout.

Keybindings

Search supports full emacs cursor movement (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+E, Ctrl+F, Ctrl+B, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+Y, etc.).

Tabs

• All — every icon from every other tab, combined into one searchable set
• Emoji — common emoji + full emoji set
• Kaomoji — curated kaomoji collection
• Unicode — common symbols + Box Drawing, Geometric Shapes, Arrows, Math Operators, Dingbats; search supports U+XXXX / 0xXXXX hex lookup and full Unicode name scan
• Nerd Font — common glyphs + full Nerd Font glyph set

Desktop integration example (Hyprland)

In my setup, I use floatty.sh to open latuicon in a floating terminal window and pipe the result to the clipboard. Here is my custom Hyprland binding for it:

bindd = $mainMod, comma, laTUIcon icon picker, exec, FLOATTY_CAPTURE_OUTPUT=1 bash floatty.sh latuicon latuicon | wl-copy

And these are the Hyprland window rules for it:

# Special rules for floating/prompt terminals
windowrule {
    name = floater-kitty
    match:class = ^(floater-kitty-.*)$
    no_anim = on
    float = on
    center = on
    size = 1000 800
}

windowrule {
  name = floater-kitty-latuicon
  match:class = floater-kitty-latuicon
  size = 700 700
}

Pressing $mainMod + , opens a floating terminal with the picker; confirming an icon copies it straight to the Wayland clipboard.

Configuration

You can configure latuicon in config.toml:

• Linux: ~/.config/latuicon/config.toml
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/latuicon/config.toml
• Windows: %APPDATA%\latuicon\config.toml

Example:

# Set the color theme
theme = "mocha"

# Set the default tab (selected tab on launch)
default_tab = "all"

# Set the search mode:
# - simple: case-insensitive substring match only
# - fuzzy: substring match, using word-level Levenshtein distance for ignoring small typos
search_mode = "fuzzy" # or 'simple'

# Configure the enabled tabs and their display order.
# Missing tabs will not have their icons available through "All".
tabs = ["all", "emoji", "kaomoji", "unicode", "nerd-font"]

# Path to a custom kaomoji file, overrides the built-in list entirely.
# Shell expansions supported (`~`, `$HOME`, `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME`, etc.)
kaomoji_file = "~/.config/latuicon/kaomoji.json"

Override the path with --config <path> / -c <path> / LATUICON_CONFIG. Precedence: CLI flag > env var > config file > built-in default.

Themes

contrast (default), late, purple, mocha, gruvbox, dracula

Set with --theme <name> / -t <name> / LATUICON_THEME / theme in the config file.

Default tab

Configures which tab is active when latuicon opens: all, emoji, kaomoji, unicode, or nerd-font (default: emoji). Must be one of the tabs enabled via Tabs.

Set with --default-tab <tab> / -d <tab> / LATUICON_DEFAULT_TAB / default_tab in the config file.

Search mode

• fuzzy (default) — substring match, falling back to word-level Levenshtein distance so small typos still find the right icon
• simple — case-insensitive substring match only

Set with --search-mode <mode> / -s <mode> / LATUICON_SEARCH / search_mode in the config file.

Tabs

You can configure which tabs are enabled, and in what order. To do so, provide a list which corresponds to a subset of the 5 tabs. A tab missing from this subset will be disabled: hidden from UI and excluded from the "All" icon set.

Set with --tabs <list> / -T <list> / LATUICON_TABS / tabs in the config file.

Custom kaomoji

You can override the built-in kaomoji list with your own, by providing a JSON file with this structure:

[
  { "icon": "(a)", "name": "Smile" },
  { "icon": "(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻", "name": "table flip" }
]

If not set explicitly, latuicon looks for this file at ~/.config/latuicon/kaomoji.json. It silently falls back to the built-in list if the custom file is missing.

Set with --kaomoji-file <path> / LATUICON_KAOMOJI_FILE / kaomoji_file in the config file.

What's the relationship with late.sh?

The project was seeded from the icon-picker component of late.sh at commit 6c670683. Code written after the initial commit is not derived from that project.

The original icon picker was written by @mevanlc; the late.sh project is maintained by @mpiorowski.

A big thanks to the both of them! ✨

[!NOTE] For more details, you can read the full story of how latuicon started: blog.lazyfreax.dev/blog/latuicon-icon-picker

See THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md for the license covering the derived code from the initial commit.