mainfontfallback not working anymore after MacTeX 2025 upgrade #11097
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I loved the option to specify to get emojis in my PDF. It worked like a charm when I was still using Tex Live 2023, but after updating to Tex Live 2025 (for macOS, i.e., via MacTex) this option suddenly stopped working and the emojis are again gone / replaced by tofu in the PDF output. I'm normally using pandoc through quarto (quarto version: 1.8.21, built-in pandoc version 3.6.3) on macOS 15.6.1. Before updating the Tex distribution it just worked. Now it doesn't but I'm also not getting any errors from quarto. When I try converting a document with my local pandoc installation directly, I get an error (though I'm also not 100% sure my example is correct, just asked ChatGPT for something I could use to test outside of quarto). pandoc version info: Test markdown file: ---
author: "Test User"
date: "2025-08-31"
from: markdown+emoji
pdf-engine: lualatex
mainfontfallback:
- "Noto Color Emoji:mode=harf"
---
# 🌍 Example Markdown with Emojis 😃
## ✨ Introduction
This document tests emoji rendering when converting to PDF.
We want to see how `--mainfontfallback` handles emojis. 🎨
## 🍔 Food Section
- 🍎 Apple
- 🍕 Pizza
- 🍣 Sushi
- 🍫 Chocolate
- 🍩 Donut
- 🥑 Avocado
## 🎉 Conclusion
Emojis ✅ should be visible in the final PDF.
If not, try different fallback fonts that include emoji glyphs. 🎭pandoc command I used: error: Am I doing it wrong? Or is there anything that changed in lualatex that would explain this? |
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Replies: 3 comments 15 replies
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Try passing (...and typst handles unicode just fine without hacks, so you markdown compiles much faster to PDF with Typst...) |
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ok, yeah, with |
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I tried this in Docker with an up-to-date TeXLive installation, and it worked fine. So I suspect that the problem is with MacTeX. StepsDockerfileFROM pandoc/latex
RUN apk --no-cache add font-noto font-noto-emoji
RUN tlmgr update --self && tlmgr update --allBuilding the Docker imagedocker build -t pandoc/latex:noto -f /path/to/Dockerfile .Creating the PDFdocker run --rm -it --user $(id -u):$(id -g) -v "$(pwd)":/data pandoc/latex:noto \
test.md --output=test.pdf --pdf-engine=lualatex |
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I was able to reproduce this (on a mac, but not using MacTeX - rather latex from nix). I found that adding |
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Worth checking the lualatex changelog to see if there are any relevant changes between 1.18 and 1.21 -- if you can find it. |
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Well, I now tried it again with Which looks to me like it's finding the font alright. So I mean, I guess it's safe to say that the problem isn't pandoc but something that got seriously screwed up during the new MacTeX installation. Well, thank you for all your help and sorry that I wasted your time with something that wasn't pandocs fault :/ |
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Ok, based on this issue, I think the problem could actually be related to the luaotfload version apparently installed alongside MacTex 2025 😵💫 (and which also wasn't reverted when I downgraded again to MaxTex 2023) |
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If you are using Quarto, why not use TinyTeX https://yihui.org/tinytex/, it should work really well with Quarto (it can be installed with pandoc --verbose -s --pdf-engine lualatex -o uni.pdf uni.md TinyTeX 2025.08 uses this version of LuaLaTeX: 
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Thanks for the tip with TinyTeX! But I actually also just replaced |
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If you are using Quarto, why not use TinyTeX https://yihui.org/tinytex/, it should work really well with Quarto (it can be installed with
quarto install tool tinytex), and if you add a few more packages with tlmgr works well with Pandoc. I used TinyTeX on a Mac and your markdown compiles to a PDF with emojis intact. I replaced "Noto Color Emoji" with "Apple Color Emoji", added amainfontand used this command:pandoc --verbose -s --pdf-engine lualatex -o uni.pdf uni.md
TinyTeX 2025.08 uses this version of LuaLaTeX: