Color Emoji.
Every platform has support for it… except Ubuntu (and most other Linux distros). So, let me show you how to add support for color emoji.
3 things before you start:
- This method is originally from an article OMG Ubuntu once published. It’s slightly modified using one of the comments on the article.
- Do not do this unless you know how to delete the emoji font and revert back.
- Not all apps support color emoji, so in unsupported apps, you’ll see grayscale emoji. They still look nice compared to the ugly Symbola emoji, though.
Let’s go.
- Download the Noto Color Emoji font here. (They’re the ugly Android Oreo emoji, but if you want the older blob emoji, download it here. Just remember that these emoji will never get updated again.)
- Unzip the file if you need to.
- Copy the NotoColorEmoji.ttf. Go to your home folder and make a new folder called .fonts. It’ll be hidden, so press Ctrl + L, type /.fonts and press Enter. Paste the file here.
- Open Terminal and type these commands, one by one, pressing Enter after each one.
- Paste this in (do not change a single character).
- If you get a blank line after pasting the above code in, skip to step 7. Otherwise, press Enter.
- Type EOF and press Enter.
- You might need to restart the apps you had open and/or your computer.
That’s it! Open Firefox or a Chrome-based browser and go to this link to test it.
If you still see some black-and-white emoji, that’s because another font is providing those and Noto Color Emoji is only subbing in what the other fonts don’t have. I don’t know how to fix that, but let me know in the comments if you know how to fix it!
