waybar won't start if more than 2 images are used

[chrislungu]

Hi all,

I'm trying to have several icons in a "quick launch" fashion, using images as icons (16x16px pngs). If I stick to two images, it all works as expected. The moment I add a third one, waybar simply refuses to load/render...

config.jsonc:

"modules-left": ["custom/applications_menu", "image#nautilus", "image#firefox", "image#terminal"],

"image#nautilus": {
	"path": "/usr/share/icons/gnome/16x16/apps/file-manager.png",
	"size": 16,
	"on-click": "nautilus"
},

"image#firefox": {
	"path": "/usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/firefox.png",
	"size": 16,
	"on-click": "firefox"
},
    
"image#terminal": {
	"path": "/usr/share/icons/gnome/16x16/apps/terminal.png",
	"size": 16,
	"on-click": "kitty"
},

When I run killall waybar && waybar &, I get this:

[2026-05-17 15:46:26.920] [info] Using configuration file /home/chris/.config/waybar/config.jsonc
[2026-05-17 15:46:26.920] [info] Discovered appearance 'light'
[2026-05-17 15:46:26.931] [info] Using CSS file /home/chris/.config/waybar/style.css
[2026-05-17 15:46:26.934] [info] Hyprland IPC starting
[2026-05-17 15:46:26.934] [info] Loading persistent workspaces from Waybar config
[2026-05-17 15:46:26.934] [info] Loading persistent workspaces from Hyprland workspace rules

However waybar doesn't start, it's as if it dies without an error message. Reducing the number of image modules to 2 "fixes" everything. The icons are 16x16px and exist, I refuse to believe that in this day and age and on a 7800X3D and 32GB RAM (6000MT/s) this would be a problem.

Is there a known bug when it comes to images?

Thanks