Enable color emojis in Chrome, Xubuntu 18.04.1

Question

I have followed this question: 18.04: color emoji not showing up at all in Chrome, only partially in Firefox, installed fonts-noto-color-emoji manually, but color emojis are still not showing up in Chrome or VS Code. Color emojis work in Mousepad, XFCE's terminal emulator.

I'm on the latest Xubuntu (XFCE) 18.04.1, fresh install.

The output of sudo apt rdepends fonts-noto-color-emoji is like this:

fonts-noto-color-emoji
Reverse Depends:
  Recommends: ubuntu-desktop
  Recommends: lubuntu-gtk-desktop
  Recommends: lubuntu-desktop
  Recommends: ubuntustudio-desktop
  Recommends: ubuntu-mate-desktop
  Recommends: ubuntu-mate-core
  Recommends: ubuntu-budgie-desktop
  Recommends: lubuntu-gtk-desktop
  Recommends: lubuntu-desktop
  Recommends: gnome
  Recommends: gajim
  Recommends: dino-im
|Recommends: corebird

How can I get color emojis working in Chrome/Chromium?

Edit: Apparently, the emoji is loaded only if the web page asks for "Noto Color Emoji" font explicitly, like on this page. Where I want it to work however is in for example where the noto font is not explicitly asked, and also dev tools, console, omni bar.

Solution

I was going to comment buuuut I don't have enough reputation 😢 (hey look, here's an emoji to check if it is working or not!)

This solution worked for me "partially", it did fix the emojis in Discord and in the Terminal, but in Firefox it was still a mix of "some of them works, some of them doesn't", I also found this but that didn't fix the issue in Firefox... 😭

So here's what I did to fix:

1. Install fonts-noto-color-emoji (sudo apt-get install fonts-noto-color-emoji)
   • This will make emojis work in the terminal & Mousepad & probably other apps too!

That's it, if you REALLY need emojis working on Firefox (emojis are wonky in Ubuntu too, you ain't losing anything by using Xubuntu), you can do this

2. Go to ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/99-emoji.conf (you will probably need to create the folders!) and add this:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
   <fontconfig>
     <match>
       <test name="family"><string>sans-serif</string></test>
       <edit name="family" mode="append" binding="strong">
         <string>Bitstream Vera Serif</string>
         <string>Noto Color Emoji</string>
       </edit>
     </match>
   
     <!-- Add emoji generic family -->
     <alias binding="strong">
       <family>emoji</family>
       <default><family>Noto Color Emoji</family></default>
     </alias>
   
     <!-- Aliases for the other emoji fonts -->
     <alias binding="strong">
       <family>Apple Color Emoji</family>
       <prefer><family>Noto Color Emoji</family></prefer>
     </alias>
     <alias binding="strong">
       <family>Segoe UI Emoji</family>
       <prefer><family>Noto Color Emoji</family></prefer>
     </alias>
     <alias binding="strong">
       <family>Emoji One</family>
       <prefer><family>Noto Color Emoji</family></prefer>
     </alias>
   </fontconfig>
   

3. fc-cache -fv

Now restart the apps and... that's it! Emojis will work in Chrome and Firefox! Have fun! 🎉

(If Firefox emojis are still borked, you can try changing the default Firefox font to Noto Color Emoji)

Keep in mind: Numbers in Firefox will have serifs

Keep in mind²: Apps installed via the Ubuntu store (or snap) won't have emojis working! I'm not sure why this happens... if someone knows how to fix this, let me know!

Firefox @ getemoji.com: ff in getemoji

Chromium @ getemoji.com: chromium in getemoji

Firefox @ Google Search: ff in google search

Discord Canary (Electron): discord canary with emojis

Terminal (Xfce): emojis in xfce terminal

🥰🥰🥰

Comments

[MrPowerGamerBR]

After researching about fontconfig a bit more, I've found a way to change the emojis without breaking IntelliJ IDEA "tip of the day" popup and without breaking YourKit! I've updated the answer with the new fix! 😃

[Dzinic]

This works great for every emoji expect the sad face ( :( ) emoji on my computer. Definitely better than it originally was.

[matigo]

Can say this works like a charm with Xubuntu 21.10 👍🏻