Android Studio "Agent" (Gemini Assistant) showing weird symbols in code blocks

Question

Android Studio’s Agent (Gemini) panel is showing incorrect font rendering inside JSON/code blocks. The text displays strange accented characters, but when I copy-paste it into any other editor, it appears perfectly normal.

Example JSON (renders wrong only in Agent):

{
 "Response": "Success",
 "strReturnMessage": "User is already subscribed to Go Green.",
 "userStatus": "Subscribed",
 "showPopUp": true
}

Preview

• MunterMan: When ever I see this sort of thing it is usually caused by the font setting of the application. So, to start at the beginning, have you checked the font settings in android studio?
• Ummer Siddique: Thanks for the suggestion. I have checked the general font settings, but I couldn't find any specific configuration available that controls the agent panel fonts. The standard editor settings don't seem to apply to that specific window. Do you know if there is a separate configuration file or hidden setting for it?
• MunterMan: If you search for font in settings you get quite a few options. This may be one that helps Appearance & behaviour->apperance - Accessibilty tag - Use custom font Mine is set to Segoe UI
• Ummer Siddique: Unfortunately, changing this setting did not solve the problem either. It seems this panel's font is not controlled by the standard editor settings, nor by the global custom UI font setting. Do you or anyone else know if there is a more granular configuration, perhaps in a theme file or the IDE's internal property files, that targets fonts for specific tool windows?
• MunterMan: I have not seen this issue before so cannot really help. The only thing I can think of now is checking your OS fonts and see if you can fix it that way.

Answer 1

I think this is not your JSON and not an encoding issue in your project.
It’s a UI rendering bug in Android Studio’s Gemini (Agent) tool window.

• The Gemini panel renders code blocks using a fallback font that has broken Unicode combining marks

• ASCII characters are visually combined with accent glyphs (◌́, ◌̈, etc.)

The copy-paste works because internally the text buffer is plain UTF-8 and only the font glyph rendering layer is broken. The clipboard gets clean characters, not the rendered glyphs

How to fix (try in this order)

1. Restart Android Studio ( I think it would force to clear the cache)

2. Switch Editor Font (important)

• Settings → Editor → Font

• Try changing font to one of these:

  • JetBrains Mono (recommended)

  • Fira Code

  • Source Code Pro

• Restart Android Studio

• Disable Ligatures

• Settings → Editor → Font

• Uncheck "Enable ligatures"

• Restart

Ligatures + fallback fonts trigger this exact artifact.

4. Update Gemini Plugin

• Settings → Plugins → Gemini

• Update to latest

• Restart

Based on the release docs google has already fixed this in newer plugin builds, but not all channels auto-update.

5. Update Android Studio
   If you’re on an older stable:

• Help → Check for Updates

• Iguana+ has partial fixes

• Koala+ fixes most cases

If you are not able to update you can Ask Gemini to output without code blocks (temporary workaround)

Answer 2

It looks like a rendering/font fallback bug in the Gemini "Agent" panel, not a data/encoding problem in the JSON.

It can be a guessing way:
1. File → Invalidate Caches / Restart and choose Invalidate and Restart. (If nothing - moving on).
2. Open Help → Edit Custom VM Options → add "-Dide.browser.jcef.gpu.disable=true" in the end. → restart → check JSON rendering again. (If nothing - moving on, again)
3. Close Studio and clear JCEF cache → restart & try again
4 Even if you use custom fonts it can affect as an advice here are "4 NO" that good to check:
- No hidden IDE property for "Agent font"
- No theme-level override for tool-window fonts
- No per-plugin font config for Gemini
- No JSON/encoding issue in your data

• Ummer Siddique: I have tried all of these option, but unfortunately non of them worked.