---
title: A fix for broken st emojis in Linux Mint
description: Emojis causing crashes in the Suckless terminal has been a long-time issue.
publishedDate: 2022-05-08
updatedDate:
  - 2023-03-21
---
> Update: This was theoretcially fixed in v2.3.6 of libXft - https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libxft/-/blob/libXft-2.3.5/NEWS
> 
> With any luck, this post is now out of date.

The [Suckless terminal, `st`](https://st.suckless.org), doesn't work properly with emojis. If you try to run a command that outputs an emoji, it'll crash the entire terminal window. Despite it not *strictly* being a `st` problem (it's some issue with an upstream library that refuses to fix it), it's the only application that I've found thus far that doesn't work with colour emojis. The problem is pretty well documented, and is very widespread. [There's](https://www.reddit.com/r/suckless/comments/pgiyaw/suckless_terminal_st_automatically_closes/) [a](https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/voidrice/issues/284) [lot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9qNXV01yzg) [of](https://dev.suckless.narkive.com/Q3qjglud/st-emojis) [documentation](https://lists.suckless.org/dev/1707/31965.html) [about](https://lists.suckless.org/dev/1610/30710.html) [it](https://lists.suckless.org/dev/1612/30836.html) [floating](https://lists.suckless.org/dev/1608/30245.html) [around](https://www.reddit.com/r/suckless/comments/gp1xfk/st_find_cause_for_terminal_crash/).

It's annoying, though not wholly unexpected, that most of the fixes for this that can be found are specifically for Arch Linux. However, I did manage to find [one solution](https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/voidrice/issues/284#issuecomment-962489435) for Ubuntu specifically that works.

The trick to it is installing two fonts - the [JoyPixels free emoji font](https://www.joypixels.com/download) and Symbola, which is a little hard to find, but appears to be [here](https://github.com/ChiefMikeK/ttf-symbola), [here](https://archive.org/details/Symbola) or at this direct-download URL, which is purportedly the author's site: https://dn-works.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/UFAS-Fonts/Symbola.zip.

![Working emojis in st](working.png)
*It works! :D*

[This](https://askubuntu.com/questions/18357/how-to-install-otf-fonts) AskUbuntu thread details how you can install OpenType fonts - the process is very similar for TrueType fonts.
