Bitmap Emoji

Design & Typography

Emoji rendered as pixel-based images at fixed resolutions, stored as PNG or similar raster formats within font files.

Bitmap emoji store pre-rendered images at specific pixel dimensions. Common resolutions are 128×128, 96×96, and 64×64 pixels. When scaled beyond their native resolution, they become blurry.

Apple Color Emoji (sbix) and Google Noto Color Emoji (CBDT) both use bitmap approaches. Apple includes multiple resolutions per glyph to handle different display sizes, which is why the font file is over 100MB.

While bitmap emoji reproduce the intended design perfectly at their native size, the industry is gradually moving toward vector formats for better scalability and smaller file sizes.

Related Terms

CBDT/CBLC (CBDT) CBDT/CBLC (CBDT)
Color Bitmap Data Table and Color Bitmap Location Table — OpenType tables for embedding bitmap color emoji in fonts. Color Emoji Color Emoji
Full-color emoji rendered using bitmap images or color vector graphics, as opposed to monochrome text-style rendering. Emoji Size Emoji Size
The display dimensions of emoji in different contexts, which vary by platform, application, and rendering context. Vector Emoji Vector Emoji
Emoji rendered using scalable vector graphics (SVG or COLR) that remain crisp at any display size.

Related Tools

🔀 Platform Compare Platform Compare
Compare how emojis render across Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, and more. See visual differences side by side.

Related Stories

How Emoji Fonts Work: COLR, CBDT, sbix, and SVG Font Tables
A technical deep-dive into emoji font formats: COLR/CPAL vector layering, CBDT/CBLC bitmap embedding, sbix Apple bitmaps, and SVG-in-OpenType.