Guide to enable system-wide Emoji support on Ubuntu 🤩

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! 🤗

This is still working great on Ubuntu 24.04, thanks!

@pkkid You're welcome. I updated the broken link at step 5 with an archived version so the link is now working as well.

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

@seupedro Thanks.

Thank you! Worked on Zorin OS 16.3 too.

works on arch linux too

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

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.

Understood. Thank you very much Michael @pkkid

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)

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

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

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.

Works in Fedora as well. Install via sudo dnf install google-noto-emoji-fonts

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.

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.)

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