OpenMoji: Open-source emojis

[davidjfelix]

FYI: google's are Apache licensed here: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-emoji

Twitter emoji (discord uses these also) are open source: https://twemoji.twitter.com/

Both of these are very consistent and good open source emoji. I think in the past a lot of these projects that were not backed by companies eventually devolved into a paid product that was no longer open source, but I'm hopeful that openmoji continues down the FOSS path.

[app4soft]

JFTR, "Symbola" font[0] actually is not an opensource and just freeware for personal use, but it was "fully free for any use"[1] till February/March 2018[2]. BTW, Even in actual state "Symbola" is my fav font for emoji input on desktop (via Gucharmap[2]) and mobile (via UnicodePad[3]).

[0] https://dn-works.com/ufas/

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180129230141/http://users.teil...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20180302032711/http://users.teil...

[3] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gucharmap

[4] https://github.com/Ryosuke839/UnicodePad

[pbronez]

Looks like Google’s aren’t super easy to use outside of Chrome and Android:

> NotoColorEmoji uses the CBDT/CBLC color font format, which is supported by Android and Chrome/Chromium OS. Windows supports it starting with Windows 10 Anniversary Update in Chrome and Edge. On macOS, only Chrome supports it, while on Linux it will support it with some fontconfig tweaking, see issue #36. Currently we do not build other color font formats.

[hjek]

But does Twemoji or Noto have a sea level rise emoji?[0]

[0]: https://openmoji.org/library/#group=extras-openmoji%2Fclimat...

[notRobot]

Twemoji is amazing. I rooted my Android phone just so I could replace stock emoji with Twemoji.

[a-nikolaev]

Emojis are normally used inlined in text. So, I think, they should demo theirs the same size as they would be when inlined in text. Otherwise hard to tell tell the emoji quality. I'm also a bit concerned with the thick black outlines, they may look not as good at the small scale (may look too noisy or may overpower small color details).

[hbn]

At least the lines aren't as horribly thick as Microsoft's current emoji set. Though I think they're gonna be redoing all their emojis with a 3D art style soon

[layer8]

Yes, it doesn’t look like they would be suitable for low-DPI screens at regular text size.

[rincewind]

The last time I evaluated these for use in my app, I found that the "consistent" and "minimalist" visual style makes it really difficult to recognise object/plant/food emoji from one another by shape or at a distance. Other emoji have clear shapes, but not enough internal detail to understand what they mean. this is especially problematic with a set of non-Android, non-Twitter, non-Apple emoji, where users haven't learned the shapes yet, but have to go by looks. It looks like the creators of this project wanted "function over form", or at least "form follows function", but in their pursuit of Bauhaus they accidentally ended up with Droodles.

[ziml77]

Even the person ones aren't great. I actually thought that the baby was a hunchbacked old man. And the facepalm looks like someone covering up one eye to read an eye chart. I seriously wouldn't have gotten either of those without the caption telling me.

[marcodiego]

From the site: "All emojis are free to use under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license"

I'd like CC0 better for this case. If anyone is looking for a repository with many CC0 icons (among other licenses), I recommend SvgRepo: https://www.svgrepo.com/

[carlinmack]

The creator of the project suggests that the license is for edits of the emojis, rather than the projects which use the emoji. [1] As someone involved with the project, I'm not sure how this should be communicated so that this is clear

[1] https://github.com/hfg-gmuend/openmoji/issues/155

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Hey, thanks for the SVGRepo link!

There's a number of these types of sites, and I like to keep links to them all, for when I'm looking for inspiration or graphics.

[nmstoker]

These are great. Certain interactions are really tough to represent pictographically but they did pretty well from what I saw.

They've even had a go at the black and white versions of some flags! (but naturally they have a few they need to work on still). Flip the color switch on the link below to see it:

https://openmoji.org/library/#group=extras-unicode%2Fsubdivi...

[Andrew_nenakhov]

In case someone doesn't know emojipedia, here is the link: https://emojipedia.org/

It covers all existing more or less complete emoji sets,, with licensing information (except for Apple Emojis. Nobody knows what is the license for Apple Emojis and how summer developers get away with using them).

[top_kekeroni_m8]

What's a summer developer?

[warning26]

I'm a fan of the artwork in some of the older versions of Noto Color Emoji, which is also open source and freely-licensed.

But, it's good to have more options in the open emoji field -- if only Apple would freely license their emoji artwork.

[carlinmack]

you can see them all a little easier at https://hfg-gmuend.github.io/openmoji/

[Igelau]

Thanks, the other link got hugged to death, or whatever we call the HN equivalent.

[jokoon]

Sweet!

I'm making an android game and UTF8 emojis are great for UI icons. I'm currently using the Google Noto one but it's certainly not usable in games.

I'm waiting for Godot 4 to allow me to display android native emojis from the system font, but I'm not sure yet it will really work.

I now want to try if I can use this font for my icons, as long as godot allows me to load a font and pick UTF8 character by their codepoint.

[edoceo]

Why is noto a no-go for games? License?

[woliveirajr]

> OpenMoji is an open-source project of 50+ students and 2 professors of the HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd (Design University) and external contributers.

Congrats to everybody for taking time and giving us those emojis.

[dec0dedab0de]

for a while I've been thinking that it would be cool if emojis were directly in the font, so that they changed style to match the font being used.

[collegeburner]

No pregnant man emoji, 0/10 literally unusable

On a more serious note, what are the author's plans to extend it? I saw that it's a project, so will it keep growing or is it pretty much done?

[carlinmack]

The plan is to stay up to date with Unicode emoji releases, and add extra ones (unicode [1] and original [2]) as they are designed

[1] https://openmoji.org/library/#group=extras-unicode [2] https://openmoji.org/library/#group=extras-openmoji

[totetsu]

I see the sports icons but where are all the sex position ones?

[bkyan]

Could these be turned into an @font-face for use on websites?

[chrisrickard]

Take a look at https://github.com/SebastianAigner/twemoji-amazing

[TheRealNGenius]

They don't particularly suit my tastes. Perhaps amateurish compared to other notable open source emojis.

[epilys]

The font files are very big (~10MB). They need some trimming before they are viable to use on websites.

[matt_s]

Unicode has emojis[0] which are freely usable for nearly every device as far as I understand.

What is the purpose here? How much overlap?

[0] https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html

[crazygringo]

Aren't those all copyrighted? E.g. for the column "Appl" (sic) they're all copyrighted by Apple. You don't have rights to use them on your website or your Android app, for example.

Just because they're on the Unicode website doesn't mean Unicode owns them. It's just a resource to be aware of how emoji can appear differently in different sets.

Unless you can point out a column that is specifically open source.

[mayoff]

Apple provides a copyrighted image for U+1F600 GRINNING FACE. Google also provides a copyrighted image for U+1F600 GRINNING FACE. And so on.

If you want to use Apple's image for U+1F600, your use either has to be “fair use” or Apple has to grant you a license. For example, Apple's app store guidelines explicitly grant you the following license:

> 4.5.6 Apps may use Unicode characters that render as Apple emoji in their app and app metadata. Apple emoji may not be used on other platforms or embedded directly in your app binary.

And of course because it's Apple, enforcement is capricious: https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/8/16992830/apple-emoji-crack...

So you might want an image for U+1F600 which you are clearly licensed to use. OpenMoji is one source for such an image.

[pyentropy]

Does Unicode provide an implementation/image of the spec?

I think each vendor has to make the design on their own.

[dangerface]

Emojis are part of unicode but the actual image representations of the unicode characters are created and owned by platforms like microsoft or apple.

You can use the platform emojies on platforms that have and support them but you can't freely use them as in you can't redistribute them so you can't host or use them on your website without licensing issues.

Its like a font like Akurrat you can use it if the platform provides it but if you are providing it you need a licence.

[wongarsu]

They even include a number of that aren't in Unicode (yet?), like this Trump emoji [1]. They are allocated in the Private Use Zone of Unicode, so there shouldn't be any collisions with future unicode additions.

1: https://openmoji.org/library/#emoji=E183

[aidenn0]

This hasn't caught up to the change in presentation of the pistol emoji: the version presented clearly depicts a revolver:

https://openmoji.org/library/#emoji=1F52B

[PostOnce]

Good. I don't need my pistol emoji replaced with a squirt gun any more than I need the word pistol in this sentence replaced by my keyboard, my browser, my OS, my font, or anyone else who isn't me who wants to dictate how I think and how I express my thoughts.

[user-the-name]

The fact that everyone's head is cut off is kind of creepy.

[EGreg]

Links plz?