Gucharmap: Finding the Right Icons for Custom Conky Themes

When building minimalist yet expressive Conky themes like Mimosa Amethyst, icons play a crucial role. Whether it's weather symbols, system indicators, or decorative glyphs, a carefully chosen Unicode icon can make your desktop come alive — without bloating it with images or widgets.

But where do you actually find these icons? That’s where Gucharmap comes in. It’s a graphical Unicode character map browser that helps you explore thousands of characters across multiple fonts, including Nerd Fonts and symbol-packed monospace fonts often used in Conky setups.

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What is Gucharmap?

Gucharmap (GNOME Character Map) is a lightweight GTK-based tool for browsing and copying Unicode characters. It supports browsing by Unicode blocks, search by name or codepoint, and displays which fonts support which characters — making it ideal for Conky theming workflows.

Key features:

• Explore thousands of characters by category
• Search by Unicode name or description (e.g. "weather", "arrow", "battery")
• Copy characters or their code points easily
• View character renderings in all installed fonts

Gucharmap preview

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Installing Gucharmap

Ubuntu / Debian:

sudo apt install gucharmap

Arch / Manjaro:

sudo pacman -S gucharmap

Fedora:

sudo dnf install gucharmap

Void Linux:

sudo xbps-install -S gucharmap

Nix / NixOS:

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.gucharmap

To Uninstall:

sudo apt remove gucharmap  # Ubuntu/Debian

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Using Gucharmap for Icon Selection in Conky

Here’s how Gucharmap helps in building themes like Mimosa Amethyst:

1. Open Gucharmap
2. Search for a term, e.g. “cloud”, “sun”, “wifi”, or “thermometer”
3. Browse matching characters and copy the one that fits your aesthetic
4. Paste it directly into your Conky Lua script or Bash output, e.g.:

echo "Weather: "
echo "Battery: "

Many of these characters are from fonts like:

• Symbols Nerd Font Mono
• Iosevka Term
• Font Awesome
• Material Design Icons

Once selected, you can render them in Conky using font directives:

${font Symbols Nerd Font:size=12}${font}

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Pro Tip: Combine with Font Preview Tools

If you use dozens of fonts, tools like fontpreview or fc-list can help list them, but Gucharmap remains unbeatable for Unicode navigation.

It's especially useful when customizing weather icons, volume indicators, and CPU/network graphics in Conky layouts. Every pixel matters — and Gucharmap helps you pick just the right one.

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Final Thoughts

Building Conky themes is as much about visual expression as it is about data. With Gucharmap, you have a precise, user-friendly way to explore the Unicode universe and find the glyphs that resonate with your theme’s identity.

For icon-rich setups like Mimosa Verdant or even monochrome minimalism, it’s the perfect tool to visually enhance your Conky dashboard — without sacrificing performance or simplicity.

Try it out — and turn your desktop into a work of typographic art.