NerdFetch: system information for a POSIX shell, with Nerd font glyphs

What NerdFetch is: one script, one file, no build

NerdFetch is described as a POSIX.1-2001 *nix fetch script using Nerdfonts, and the subtitle in the README names the platforms it aims at: Linux of version 2.6 or later, macOS and OSX, Android, and the BSDs, among others.

The repository is three entries: a LICENSE file, the README, and the script itself named nerdfetch. There is no package structure, no build system, no dependency manifest and no compiled artefact. The feature list says it in three words: strong cross-OS compatibility, not bloated, and portable as a POSIX-1.2001 shell.

That constraint is what makes it different from the tools it resembles. A script that sticks to POSIX.1-2001 rather than bash can run under a Bourne shell, under dash, under the KornShell, under a BusyBox ash on a router, and under the shell that ships inside a Termux installation on Android. The cost is that none of the convenient extensions are available, so the script has to gather its information with portable tools and do its own text handling.

The licence is MIT, and the project is packaged for a wide range of distributions. The releases move in small increments: v8.5.5 on 2026-07-16, v8.5.4 on 2026-03-15 and v8.5.2 on 2026-02-07, with the last push to the repository on 2026-07-16 and the repository not archived.

There is also a packaging status badge pointing at Repology, which tracks how many distributions ship the package, and the project's home page is its AUR package entry.

Installing through the package managers

Because the script is packaged for most of the Linux world, the sensible install is through a package manager, and the README lists four.

On Arch Linux, through the AUR:

yay -S nerdfetch # -git
nerdfetch

with the note to replace yay with whatever AUR helper you use, and the trailing comment pointing out the git variant of the package.

On macOS, through Homebrew:

brew install nerdfetch
nerdfetch

On Nix:

nix-shell -p nerdfetch
nerdfetch

On Gentoo, through the GURU overlay, which has to be added first according to the Gentoo wiki, with the GURU overlay not needed on LiGurOS:

emerge nerdfetch
nerdfetch

Each of these gives you a managed installation that your system's update mechanism knows about, which matters for a single-file program precisely because nobody would otherwise track it.

The README's table of contents in the repository links to the AUR package, the Homebrew formula, the Nix package search and the Gentoo overlay, so the packaging is maintained across ecosystems rather than being an accident of one distribution.

Manual install and the run-once mode

For a machine that is not one of those, the README gives a manual route that is worth reading carefully, because it downloads and executes a remote file.

sudo curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ThatOneCalculator/NerdFetch/main/nerdfetch -o /usr/bin/nerdfetch
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/nerdfetch
nerdfetch

The script is fetched over HTTPS from the repository's main branch and written to /usr/bin, then made executable. Note what that means: the file you run is whatever is on the main branch at the moment you fetch it, not a tagged release, and the flag -f makes curl fail rather than write a partial file, which is the sensible default here.

There is a second variant for Android, where Termux keeps its own prefix rather than /usr/bin:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ThatOneCalculator/NerdFetch/main/nerdfetch -o /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/nerdfetch
chmod a+x /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/nerdfetch
nerdfetch

The permission flag is different, a+x rather than +x, and no sudo is used because the Termux prefix belongs to the user.

And there is a run-once mode, with the README warning in bold that this will not install the program:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ThatOneCalculator/NerdFetch/main/nerdfetch | sh

This is the pattern to be careful with. Piping a remote script into a shell executes it with your privileges and without leaving a file you can inspect, and here the content is whatever main happens to hold. It is convenient for a quick look at the output on a machine you do not want to modify, and it is the opposite of what you want for anything long-lived.

Font switching: Nerdfonts, Cozette, Phosphor and Emojis

The whole point of the tool is the glyphs, so the font handling is the feature that decides whether it looks right or looks like a row of boxes.

The README lists the dependencies as any Nerdfonts font, or Cozette, or Phosphor, and the font itself is a separate installation from the script. That separation is worth understanding: NerdFetch does not bundle or install a font, and a terminal whose font lacks the relevant codepoints will render the icons as replacement characters however good the script is.

Four options are documented. Nerdfonts is used by default. The -c flag switches to Cozette, the -p flag to Phosphor, and the -e flag to Emojis.

That is a smaller switch surface than most tools of this kind offer, and it is a deliberate narrowing: three icon sets, one of them the default, with the choice made by a single letter on the command line. Cozette and Phosphor are both notable for being narrow, deliberately constructed fonts rather than patched system fonts, which is why they are offered as alternatives to the general Nerdfonts distribution.

The README shows the result under each of them, which is the fastest way to know which to pick: the Nerdfonts screenshot, the Phosphor Bold screenshot and the Cozette screenshot sit side by side at the top of the document.

The compatibility matrix: which systems and which shells

The README is unusually thorough here, and the lists are the best evidence that the portability claim is real rather than aspirational.

The operating systems tested run to twenty-eight entries: Debian based Linux, Ubuntu based Linux, Arch based Linux, Gentoo based Linux, RedHat based Linux, OpenSUSE based Linux, Bedrock Linux, Alpine Linux, KISS Linux, Void Linux, Exherbo Linux, NixOS Linux, Solus Linux, yiffOS Linux, Slackware Linux, BirbOS Linux, CRUX Linux, Clear Linux, Tiny Core Linux, NuTyX Linux, macOS and Mac OSX, Android through Termux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and OpenWrt.

The inclusion of Tiny Core, Bedrock, KISS and CRUX is the meaningful part, since those are small or unusual systems where a script with bash-only constructs would simply fail. OpenWrt and the BSDs are the other interesting group, since they are where BusyBox-style shells live.

The shells tested are: the Bourne Again SHell, bash; the Z Shell, zsh; the Almquist Shell, ash, and the Debian Almquist Shell, dash; the KornShell, ksh, and the MirBSD KornShell, mksh; the Oil Shell, osh; Yet Another Shell, yash; and the Bourne RUsty SHell, brush, from version 0.4.0.

There is one known issue, and the README lists it plainly: nsh is currently unsupported, with a link to the issue tracker. For a script whose entire premise is portability, an unsupported shell is reported rather than quietly ignored, which is the behaviour you want from a project like this.

Where NerdFetch is the wrong choice

The first wrong case is a terminal without a patched font. If the console renders the icons as empty boxes, the tool has failed at its only job, and no flag fixes that. The fix is a font, not a different script.

The second wrong case is anything that needs machine-readable values. This is a display script. It prints a banner, and while the underlying commands it runs are portable, the output format is designed to be read by a person, so parsing it for a monitoring system or a status bar is fragile.

The third wrong case is a machine you do not control and would rather not run remote code on. Both manual install paths fetch a script from the main branch, and the run-once path pipes it straight into a shell. In a locked-down environment, copying the single file across by hand and reading it first is the reasonable move, and because the repository is one file that is easy to do.

The fourth wrong case is Windows, which the dependency list rules out directly with anything but Windows.

The realistic alternative is neofetch or one of its many successors, including fastfetch, which cover more platforms and produce more machine-readable output, and the difference in approach is that NerdFetch stays a single POSIX shell script with no runtime, no package to install and no compile step, at the cost of the richer output those tools can produce. For a phone in Termux, a router, or a minimal distribution where installing a binary is unwelcome, that trade is worth making; for a workstation where you want a rich and constantly improving system summary, it is not.

Editorial conclusion

NerdFetch is the right choice for a terminal that can render Nerd font glyphs and a user who wants a compact system banner without installing a Python or binary program, because the whole tool is one POSIX shell script that you can read before you run it. It is the wrong choice on a console without a patched font, where the icons become unreadable boxes, and it is the wrong choice for anything that needs accurate or scriptable values, since it is a display script rather than a reporting tool. Verify first that your terminal font is a Nerdfont, Cozette or Phosphor, that your shell is one of the tested ones if you rely on the exotic ones, and that the manual curl install path writes to a location your system expects for executables.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. License: MIT
2. Project website
3. README
4. Releases
5. ThatOneCalculator/NerdFetch on GitHub