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arafathusayn/Emoji-on-Ubuntu.md

Last active November 26, 2025 14:07
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Guide to enable system-wide Emoji support on Ubuntu 🤩
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Emoji-on-Ubuntu.md

1. Install Fonts

sudo apt install fonts-noto-color-emoji

2. Add Font Configuration

  • Open ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/01-emoji.conf file in an editor.
  • Copy-paste the lines below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <alias>
    <family>serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Noto Color Emoji</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Noto Color Emoji</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Noto Color Emoji</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
</fontconfig>

3. Flush Font Cache

fc-cache -f -v

4. Restart the programs (e.g. web browsers)

5. Check

  • Visit this link 🧐 to check the emoji list.

6. That's it! 🤗

@seupedro
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seupedro commented Mar 3, 2024 •
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I create a gist to facilitate the testing. You can test like this:

curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/seupedro/6c569a59aefc2023d7767e229f90ff96/raw/486c2a57ff7b7cb733cedf0445158346438fc93c/emoiji-list-15-unicode-single-line.txt

@arafathusayn
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arafathusayn commented Mar 5, 2024

@seupedro Thanks.

@abjl7
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abjl7 commented May 16, 2024

Thank you! Worked on Zorin OS 16.3 too.

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ghost commented May 31, 2024

works on arch linux too

@samvrao
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samvrao commented Oct 31, 2024

But how do I get the emojis while typing? Windows had an easy keyboard shortcut: Win + . (dot) Is there an equivalent here?

@pkkid
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pkkid commented Oct 31, 2024 •
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On my system, I just press the Win key and type "elephant" or something else and the emoji shows up. Clicking this copies the character to my clipboard. If I press left to click on the "Characters" app, it opens a new window with more in depth search and filtering.
image

@samvrao
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samvrao commented Oct 31, 2024

Understood. Thank you very much Michael @pkkid

@pierrebrd
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pierrebrd commented Nov 2, 2024

But how do I get the emojis while typing? Windows had an easy keyboard shortcut: Win + . (dot) Is there an equivalent here?

The Emoji Copy Gnome Extension does it perfectly!

Also, on my Ubuntu 24.04, the latest version of the fonts-noto-color-emoji package doesn't work (emojis don't show anywhere), I had to install the font from Google Fonts to make it works natively (the emojis show even without the configuration file)

@rafaelnp
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rafaelnp commented Apr 16, 2025

If you use Librewolf browser on Ubuntu, it may cause problems with the html font rendering:

https://codeberg.org/librewolf/issues/issues/1882

@samvrao
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samvrao commented Apr 16, 2025

Thank you @pierrebrd That looks like a more seamless implementation. Not sure why I didnt get notified of your comment months ago. Would have saved me lot of time lol.

@Markieta
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Markieta commented May 26, 2025 •
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Works in Fedora as well. Install via sudo dnf install google-noto-emoji-fonts

@A1exan10er
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A1exan10er commented Jul 21, 2025

On my system, I just press the Win key and type "elephant" or something else and the emoji shows up. Clicking this copies the character to my clipboard. If I press left to click on the "Characters" app, it opens a new window with more in depth search and filtering. image

I noticed this feature, too. It seems this is new on Ubuntu 24.04 and never appeared on previous systems. 😉 (This is an emoji from system.)

@Markieta
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Markieta commented Sep 5, 2025

This recently stopped working for me (Fedora 42), wonder if anyone else is experiencing the same?

@defencedog
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defencedog commented Oct 30, 2025

But how do I get the emojis while typing? Windows had an easy keyboard shortcut: Win + . (dot) Is there an equivalent here?

The Emoji Copy Gnome Extension does it perfectly!

Also, on my Ubuntu 24.04, the latest version of the fonts-noto-color-emoji package doesn't work (emojis don't show anywhere), I had to install the font from Google Fonts to make it works natively (the emojis show even without the configuration file)

Manually downloading Google font helped me on Ubuntu 22
1- Download as .zip Google Noto Emoji font
2- Extract .zip to get .ttf file
3- cp NotoColorEmoji-Regular.ttf ~/.fonts && fc-cache -fv
4- sudo cp NotoColorEmoji-Regular.ttf /usr/local/share/fonts && sudo fc-cache -fv
5- No reboot required

@samvrao
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samvrao commented Nov 5, 2025 via email

@DYW972
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DYW972 commented Nov 24, 2025

Thank you for this gits.
Works on Ubuntu 24.... But the emoji are are much larger than surrounding text. How to make them fit and align with the rest of the prompt ?

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