Flag Emojis not rendering

html unicode utf-8

33,434

Solution 1

The flag emojis may not render regardless of what you do, depending on the platform (rather than merely the browser and/or the browser font). To find out, go to https://emojipedia.org/search/?q=emoji+flags and look at the rendering of the emoji flag for Djibouti, to the left of the text "Flag: Djibouti".

If you see an image of a flag all is well but if you only see DJ then the emoji flags may not be supported. I visited that page on an iPad, Linux Mint 18.2 and Windows 10, and this is what I found:

The Djibouti flag emoji rendered on the iPad.
The Djibouti flag was rendered as DJ on Linux Mint 18.2 using Firefox.
The Djibouti flag was rendered as DJ on Windows 10 using Firefox, although this was expected since "Microsoft doesn't support any country flags on Windows, instead showing the two-letter country codes".

So if you only want to render emoji flags in the browser on Apple platforms you should be fine, and if you want to render emoji flags in the browser on Windows it will render the two character country code instead. I'm not sure about the situation on Linux since although it didn't work for me in my environment, I couldn't find anything explicitly stating that it should or should not work.

An alternative to using Unicode emoji flags if you need this working on all platforms is to download free emojis which are actually just small png images. Here are some samples for the Argentinian flag.

Update:

In the absence of a true solution as explained above, here's an alternative approach which does not use Unicode emojis, but instead uses downloaded .png images:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>Flag demo</title>
        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
        <!–– Credit to Alvaro Montoro for this approach - see https://stackoverflow.com/a/41189982/2985643 ––>
        <link rel="StyleSheet" href="css/flagdemo.css">
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1>Flag demo</h1>
        <div class="select-sim" id="select-color">
            <div class="options">
                <div class="option">
                    <input type="radio" name="flag" value="" id="flag-" checked />
                    <label for="flag-">&#x2690; Pick a country</label>
                </div>
                <div class="option">
                    <input type="radio" name="flag" value="Argentina" id="flag-argentina" />
                    <label for="flag-argentina"><img src="img/argentina-flag-round-icon-16.png" alt="" /> Argentina</label>
                </div>
                <div class="option">
                    <input type="radio" name="flag" value="Brazil" id="flag-brazil" />
                    <label for="flag-brazil"><img src="img/brazil-flag-round-icon-16.png" alt="" /> Brazil</label>
                </div>
                <div class="option">
                    <input type="radio" name="flag" value="Chile" id="flag-chile" />
                    <label for="flag-chile"><img src="img/chile-flag-round-icon-16.png" alt="" /> Chile</label>
                </div>
            </div>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

The content of the .css file (flagdemo.css) is identical to that provided by Alvaro Montoro in this SO answer to the question How to add images in select list?.

Since this approach only uses standard HTML and CCS (no Javascript or JQuery) it should work on any platform:

Solution 2

Microsoft’s emoji font, Segoe UI Emoji, deliberately does not support any flags. You’d have to supply your own font files if colour display for Windows users is important to you. Unfortunately, there is no colour font format that is supported by all common browsers. Firefox ships with Twemoji (Twitter’s emoji set) included, but using the same font in Chrome will result in black-and-white outline drawings instead, for example.

You’re honestly better off just using embedded images if it’s feasible for your project. Alternatively, you need to compromise and accept that most Windows users simply won’t see any flags displayed.

Solution 3

As mentioned by several others, some platforms such as Windows don't support country flags (see https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/flag-emoji/85b163bc-786a-4918-9042-763ccf4b6c05?page=1 for a longer discussion on why this might be the case).

I ended up using a script for replacing my emojis with pngs. I thought this might be helpful for others, so here you go

HTML-version:

<html>
<body>
    <h1> 🇺🇸  🇺🇸  🇺🇸 </h1>
    <p>Lets test more emoji replacement 😀 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 .</p>
</body>
<script>
const flagemojiToPNG = (flag) => {
    var countryCode = Array.from(flag, (codeUnit) => codeUnit.codePointAt()).map(char => String.fromCharCode(char-127397).toLowerCase()).join('')
    return "<img src='https://flagcdn.com/24x18/" + countryCode + ".png'>"
}
    var reg = new RegExp('(?:\ud83c[\udde6-\uddff]){2}', 'g');
    document.body.innerHTML = document.body.innerHTML.replaceAll(reg, flagemojiToPNG);
</script>
    </html>

React version (for replacing individual flags):

const flagemojiToPNG = (flag) => {
    var countryCode = Array.from(flag, (codeUnit) => codeUnit.codePointAt()).map(char => String.fromCharCode(char-127397).toLowerCase()).join('')
    return (<img src={`https://flagcdn.com/24x18/${countryCode}.png`} alt='flag' />)
}

Solution 4

it's depending on BOTH the platform and the browser

so the best solution for the present is to use images

Download Free Flags from here: https://flagpedia.net/download

I will recommend using webp

Solution 5

Can use react-select to create dropdown with below properties.

Need to create Array of object with two-letter country code, label and value for dropdown.

{
      label: `india`,
      value: `+91`,
      emojiFlag: 'IN'
}

Code to convert two-letter country code to flag png of Flagcdn.

flagemojiToPNG = (flag: string) => {
    var countryCode = Array.from(flag, (codeUnit: any) => codeUnit.codePointAt()).map(char => String.fromCharCode(char-127397).toLowerCase()).join('')
    return (<img src={`https://flagcdn.com/24x18/${countryCode}.png`} alt='flag' />)
  }

Import Select from 'react-select';
<Select
          options={dataSource}
          formatOptionLabel={data => (
            <>{flagemojiToPNG(data.emojiFlag)}  {data.label}</>
          )}
          placeholder={"Select Country"}
          onChange={}
          value={}
        />

Can render image on React select with formatOptionLabel Prop of React-select. datasource- Will be your dropdown's datasource.

View more solutions

33,434

leonidas56

Updated on July 09, 2022

Comments

leonidas56 almost 2 years
I have a dropdown menu on my header that I use to display phone numbers for different countries and I need to put a flag on its side, but no flags are showing, only the letter representation of the flags (for example the argentinian flag looks like this 🇦🇷 but it shows the emoji for the letter A and the letter R) as that how flag emojis works as far as I know, how can I evade this (showing a hamburger in the second phone number just to show that emojis do indeed work on my site).
```
<select name="Telefonos" id="group">
    <option value="+543515296002">&#x1F1E6;&#x1F1F7; +54351529600
    <option value="+12398105440">🍔 +12398105440
    <option value="+12398105440">🇺🇸 +12398105440
</select>
```
this is what I've tried, either using the code or copying the emoji doesn't work, even though it does show when I am coding it.

and this is what actually renders
- Our_Benefactors over 5 years
  
  does your browser support those emojis?
Mr Lister over 5 years

No, not in a dropdown. But why do you think there's no possible way to do this, as the OP's own screenshot shows it working one out of three times?
Lukas over 5 years

Because flag emojis are not supported, there not like the other emojis. If you look at the screenshot, you can see, that all flags are not working except the non-flag emoji.
Mr Lister over 5 years

Sorry, again, what do you mean by "flag emojis are not supported"? At the very least you will need some context here. This is what I see in Firefox when I put the OP's code in a jsfiddle: i.stack.imgur.com/aou6m.png
Lukas over 5 years

The emoji font Segoe UI Emoji only supports regular emojis and no flags. It simply means that flag emojis are not shown. That is the reason because all flag emojis in the dropdown are not working, but the regular hamburger works.
Mr Lister over 5 years

The OP never mentioned using Segoe UI Emoji.
leonidas56 over 5 years

this seems to be a good alternative, but i am not finding how to insert a png into the start of a option of a select, mind you i am using wordpress
leonidas56 over 5 years

just to let you know, the time the flag emoji worked (and yes it is an emoji, one i copied directly from emojipedia.org) was on my hosting file editor, it was chrome and it was windows but it is the only context i've seen it show
leonidas56 over 5 years

i got it to work on jsfiddle but when i put it back on my site it just doesnt work jsfiddle.net/5v7onjb8/
skomisa over 5 years

@leonidas56 I updated my answer, with an approach that does not use Unicode emojis. see How to add images in select list? for more details.
leonidas56 over 5 years

Hey! this worked perfectly, only thing is i am not being able to actually select any option, i can only open or close the select
Lukas over 5 years

@MrLister Segoe UI is the standard and will be used anyway.
Luke T O'Brien almost 5 years

I have also been looking into this, font awesome has USA flag but it's not the style you want, you can also download them as SVG from this site
Piskvor left the building over 4 years

As for Linux, I see all flags on FF 70, no flags at all in Chrome/ium 77/78/79. Haven't found a webfont yet.
Addono over 3 years

@LukeTO'Brien your second link seems to be broken. I assume it should now be flagicons.lipis.dev.
Luke T O'Brien over 3 years

@Addono Yes that's right thank you - I cannot edit my comment tho :'(
Stefan Reich over 3 years

@Lukas You mean "will be used anyway on Windows", right? You really do need to provide more context.
skomisa about 2 years

You should delete this answer. It does not add anything new, and is just a rewording of what was in my existing answer below: "The flag emojis may not render regardless of what you do, depending on the platform (rather than merely the browser and/or the browser font)....An alternative to using Unicode emoji flags if you need this working on all platforms is to download free emojis which are actually just small png images."