Why do checkboxes look so wierd and inconsistent? How to make it look like in the symbols reference?

Antennen · November 4, 2025, 9:27am

Hey. When rendering the symbols for checkboxes/ballots they look weird, and do not correspond to those in the reference. Is this a bug or how to best resolve?

= Typst \#sym

- Square: #sym.square
- Ballot: #sym.ballot
- Crossed: #sym.ballot.cross
- Heavy: #sym.ballot.heavy
- Ballot check: #sym.ballot.check

= Unicode:

- Empty: ☐
- Checked: ☑
- Crossed: ☒

According to the symbols reference i would expect them to look like:

This could be a font issue? It is behaving unexpectedly without setting the font.

bluss · November 4, 2025, 12:46pm

The symbols depend on the font, so you have full control over the final outcome here, but only if we try carefully. I suggest first turning off font fallback then it will only use the current font, and not try to find the symbol in other fonts.

#set text(fallback: false, font: "Libertinus Serif")
= Typst \#sym

- Square: #sym.square
- Ballot: #sym.ballot
- Crossed: #sym.ballot.cross
- Heavy: #sym.ballot.heavy
- Ballot check: #sym.ballot.check

= Unicode:

- Empty: ☐
- Checked: ☑
- Crossed: ☒

So now we have a new starting point for the question - it’s plain that the default font doesn’t give us any of these symbols, except the first one! Configure a font (or multiple fonts) that has symbols that look nice to you, and then it should be consistent.

I don’t think it’s a bug - symbol appearance always depends on the font used.

Maxwell · November 10, 2025, 6:36pm

I’m an expert on Unicode Emoji, I know every hex codepoint.

If you like the style of Typst symbol doc, set the font Symbola.

#set text(font:"Symbola", fallback:false)

You @Antennen may need pay to use the Symbola Fonts, use google open license fonts instead !
Unless selling google fonts, you can do any thing, in my rough view from the GNU: All Licenses and Comments to them

#set text(font: ("Noto Sans Symbol", "Noto Sans Symbol2"))