explaingit

googlefonts/noto-emoji

★ 4,707PythonAudience · designerComplexity · 2/5LicenseSetup · easy

TLDR

Google's open-source emoji font and image library, providing a complete Unicode emoji set as installable font files, SVG vectors, and PNG images that you can use in apps, websites, or design projects.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((noto-emoji))
    What it includes
      Color emoji font
      SVG vector files
      PNG image files
      Emoji metadata
    File formats
      CBDT color font
      Monochrome font
      SVG assets
    Platform support
      Android and Chrome
      Windows Chrome
      Linux manual setup
    Use cases
      App emoji rendering
      Web icon sets
      Emoji pickers
      Server image gen
Click or tap to explore — scroll the page freely

Code map

Detail Auto

An interactive map of this repo's files and how they connect — its source is parsed live in your browser. Click Visualize to build it.

filefunction / class

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Embed a consistent set of color emoji in a cross-platform app that looks the same on Android, Chrome, and Windows.

USE CASE 2

Use individual emoji SVG or PNG files as icons in a web or design project without depending on system emoji.

USE CASE 3

Build a custom emoji picker for a chat app using the included metadata, short codes, and image assets.

USE CASE 4

Install the Noto Emoji font on a Linux server to render emoji correctly in server-generated images.

Tech stack

PythonSVGFontUnicode

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

Download the font file or individual PNG and SVG assets directly from the repository, no build step needed for most use cases.

Font files are free to use and redistribute under the SIL Open Font License, tools and images are under Apache 2.0. Both allow commercial use.

In plain English

Noto Emoji is Google's open-source emoji library, providing a complete set of emoji characters that follows the Unicode standard. The name "Noto" stands for "No Tofu": tofu is the nickname for the small blank rectangle that appears when a device cannot display a character, and the goal of the Noto font family is to eliminate those gaps across all languages and symbols. The repository contains several things. The main deliverable is a color emoji font file that can be installed and used on computers and devices. Alongside the font, the repository also holds the individual image assets used to build it: vector SVG files and PNG files for each emoji. There is also metadata covering emoji ordering, short codes (the text names like ":smile:" that apps use to trigger emoji), and ASCII equivalents. The color font uses a format called CBDT/CBLC, which is the format Android and Chrome-based browsers use for color emoji. Support varies by platform: Windows 10 and later supports it in Chrome and Edge, macOS supports it only in Chrome, and Linux requires some manual configuration. A separate black-and-white (monochrome) version of the font is also available and is under active development as a variable font, meaning a single file can represent different weights and styles. The font files are released under the SIL Open Font License, which allows free use and redistribution. The tools and most image files are under the Apache 2.0 license. Flag images are in the public domain or otherwise free of copyright restrictions. This repository is maintained by the Google Fonts team.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
How do I use the Noto Emoji font in a web app so emoji look consistent across all browsers and operating systems?
Prompt 2
Show me how to use the noto-emoji SVG files as inline icons in a React component.
Prompt 3
How do I install the Noto Emoji color font on Ubuntu Linux and configure Chrome to use it?
Prompt 4
I want to build an emoji picker, how do I use the noto-emoji metadata and short codes to map emoji names like smile to their image files?
Open on GitHub → Explain another repo

← googlefonts on gitmyhub — every repo by this author, as a profile.

Verify against the repo before relying on details.