Emoji font

[Victor Delta]

Is anyone able to recommend a good freeware emoji font please, for use on a Windows laptop?

Thanks

[MidnightCowboy]

Not exactly within my knowledge set but is this any good for you?

https://github.com/MorbZ/OpenSansEmoji

[Victor Delta]

Originally Posted by MidnightCowboy

Not exactly within my knowledge set but is this any good for you?

https://github.com/MorbZ/OpenSansEmoji

Thanks but that's not really what I was looking for. I was hoping to find a font that allows one to insert the same (or similar) colourful emoji characters as the ones on iPhones etc.

[Remah]

You don't say which version of Windows you use. That is very relevant to the use of native Windows support for colored emoji.

The standard Windows emoji font is Segoi UI Emoji Regular which was introduced in Windows 8 and later added to Windows 7 through update KB2729094. Long Zheng at istartedsomething.com created a test page so you can see the colored Segoi UI Emoji. You can also see the original Wikipedia page.

Your ability to see colored emoji in your documents depends upon the application you are using.
The article "Color Emoji in Windows 8.1—The Future of Color Fonts?" explains how the new colored TrueType/OpenType fonts are compatible with applications that don't use the color information.

Microsoft's decision to embed vector-graphics is a better approach than embedding bitmap PNG icons which is what Apple does. But when it comes to using the colored emoji, Apple has the better approach. OSX has the colored emoji as the default whereas Windows 10 usually displays the monochome versions by default.

Your ability to use the colored emoji requires your applications to support them. For example, Google Chrome for Mac only supported colored emoji quite recently. Under Windows, you will have similar issues and, for example, Google Chrome for Windows still does not support colored emoji - see this nice short article on Windows support of emoji.

FYI, Google does its own FreeType standard for colored fonts.

The Microsoft Developer Network article on Script and Font Support in Windows provides more information:

Color emoji display is supported in the DWrite text stack and enabled by default in the HTML and XAML application UI frameworks used for Windows Store apps and in the Windows shell.

[Remah]

Here's another useful article How to use emoji on Windows 10 which shows how to use the on-screen keyboard to enter emoji easily. There are links to other articles on emoji entry in Windows 7 and 8.

Other keyboard input methods require Unicode character codes to be entered. See the Wikipedia article on Unicode input which covers the main operating systems not just Windows.

[Victor Delta]

Many thanks for such a helpful and informative response.

[Remah]

If you want Windows 10-style emojis then you can use the new Segoe MDL2 icons but read the following so you understand how different they are.

Microsoft have updated the Segoe UI emojis for Windows 10 and added new icons. These icons are available for use in text but are primarily designed as icons that are easier to combine, e.g. by overlapping.

The developer documentation Guidelines for Segoe MDL2 icons which advises developers to update their applications for Windows 10 also provides the following useful details:

The Segoe UI Symbol will still be available as a "legacy" resource.

They are designed as icons within a square so rotation and overlap will be easier to achieve:

The new MDL2 fonts are designed so that the footprint of the icon area is a square Em. ... with the font’s metrics set so that icons are aligned within the font’s em-square instead of on a typographic baseline.

But that's also why they won't be so useful as text:

Unlike with Segoe UI Symbol, the icons in the Segoe MDL2 Assets font are not intended for use in-line with text.