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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! 🤗

@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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