Version: Unity 6.1 Alpha (6000.1)
Language : English
Color gradients
Advanced Text Generator

Color emojis

You can include color emojis and glyphs in text.

For Editor UI(User Interface) Allows a user to interact with your application. Unity currently supports three UI systems. More info
See in Glossary
, you can include emojis directly, and it works because the Editor UI uses the default editor font fallbacks.

For runtime UI, you must import a font file with color emojis and set it as the fallback emoji text asset.

Color emojis example
Color emojis example

Set up color emojis

Create a color emojis font asset and add it to the UITK Text Settings Fallback.

  1. In your project, import a font file that has color emojis in it.
  2. Right-click the font file, and then select Create > Text Core > Font Asset > Color. This ensures that you create the font asset with the correct shader (Sprite) and the correct atlas render mode (Color).
  3. In the InspectorA Unity window that displays information about the currently selected GameObject, asset or project settings, allowing you to inspect and edit the values. More info
    See in Glossary
    window of the UITK Text Settings, in the Fallback Emoji Text Assets section, from the Text Asset List, select the color emojis font asset.

Include emojis in text

To include emojis in text, do any of the following:

  • Include emojis in text through their Unicode value. For example, enter \U0001F601 to represent a smile.
  • Use your operating system virtual keyboard.
  • Copy the emojis from an external text editing tool and paste them in your text field.

Control emoji fallback search

You can prioritize searching the Fallback Emoji Text Assets for emojis. For example, if a font includes black and white emojis, you can choose whether to use emojis from the primary font or the Fallback Emoji Text Assets list.

  1. In UI Builder, select the text element in the Hierarchy panel.

  2. In the Inspector panel, in the Attributes section, enable or disable the Emoji Fallback Support option:

    • Enabled: The system searches the Fallback Emoji Text Assets list first for any emoji characters.
    • Disabled: The system searches the primary font asset assigned to the text element first.

Limitations

The color emojis feature doesn’t support the following:

  • Some OpenType font features, such as chain context and single substitution.
  • Apple fonts that use the AAT format, which is a predecessor to OpenType.
  • SVG color glyphs.
  • COLR Table Format version 2 (COLR v2), such as Noto Color Emoji.

Dynamic OS font asset has limited support on some iOS devices. The Apple Color Emoji font file found on macOS and several iOS devices works correctly. However, the Apple Color Emoji-160px found on newer iOS devices isn’t supported. Its emojis are encoded in JPEG format, which isn’t supported by FreeType.

Additional resources

Color gradients
Advanced Text Generator