OpenType

Emoji Ecosystem

A font format developed by Microsoft and Adobe that supports color emoji rendering through multiple color table technologies.

OpenType is the dominant font format for modern computing. For emoji specifically, OpenType supports several color font technologies that allow fonts to include full-color emoji glyphs:

- **COLR/CPAL**: Layered color vectors (used by Windows, Android/Chrome)
- **CBDT/CBLC**: Embedded color bitmaps (used by Google Noto Color Emoji)
- **SVG in OpenType**: SVG documents embedded in fonts (used by Firefox, Adobe)
- **sbix**: Apple's bitmap format (used by Apple Color Emoji)

Different platforms support different color font technologies, which is part of why emoji look different across devices.

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. COLR/CPAL (COLR) COLR/CPAL (COLR)
OpenType color font tables that define emoji as layered vector shapes with a color palette, used by Windows and Chrome. Emoji Font Emoji Font
A digital font file containing color emoji glyph designs, using technologies like COLR, CBDT, SVG, or sbix for rendering. SVG in OpenType (SVGinOT) SVG in OpenType (SVGinOT)
A method of embedding SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) documents directly in OpenType font files for scalable color emoji.

Related Tools

🔢 Unicode Lookup Unicode Lookup
Enter a codepoint like U+1F600 and get the emoji, encoding details, UTF-8/16 bytes, and HTML entities.

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.