The following is my emacs-dashboard config:

  (use-package dashboard
    :custom
    (dashboard-icon-type 'nerd-icons)
    (dashboard-set-heading-icons t)
    (dashboard-set-file-icons t)
    :config
    (dashboard-setup-startup-hook))

If I start emacs via emacs, then the dashboard will properly show nerd-icons.

But when I start emacs via emacsclient -c -a="" the nerd-icons are not present on the dashboard. They will appear when I refresh the dashboard by pressing g.