How Emoji Fonts Work: COLR, CBDT, sbix, and SVG Font Tables

How Emoji Fonts Work

Standard OpenTypeOpenType
รูปแบบฟอนต์ที่พัฒนาโดย Microsoft และ Adobe รองรับการแสดงผลอิโมจิสีผ่านเทคโนโลยีตารางสีหลายแบบ fonts store glyphs as monochrome vector outlines. Emoji fonts break this model completely — they need full-color, high-detail images at multiple sizes. Four different technical approaches have emerged to solve this problem, each with different trade-offs in quality, scalability, and platform compatibility.

The Core Challenge

A regular font glyph is a set of Bézier curves colored by the application. An emoji glyph needs:

Full RGB (or RGBA) color information
Multiple levels of detail at different sizes
Complex compositions (e.g., skin tones, hair colors)
Support for sequences of multiple code points

OpenType addresses this with four color font specifications, each stored in dedicated font tables.

COLR/CPALCOLR/CPAL (COLR)
ตารางฟอนต์สี OpenType ที่กำหนดอิโมจิเป็นรูปร่างเวกเตอร์แบบเลเยอร์พร้อมชุดสี ใช้โดย Windows และ Chrome: Layered Vector Glyphs

Used by: Segoe UI Emoji (Windows), Noto Color Emoji (recent versions), TwemojiTwemoji
ชุดอิโมจิโอเพนซอร์สที่ Twitter สร้างขึ้นในตอนแรก ให้ไฟล์อิโมจิ SVG และ PNG ที่สามารถใช้ในโปรเจกต์ใดก็ได้ Mozilla

COLR (Color Table) and CPAL (Color Palette Table) work together. A COLR glyph is composed of multiple layers, each a monochrome glyph from the font's regular outline table, filled with a color from the CPAL palette.

COLRv0 (Original)

The original COLR format (v0) supports flat fills only — no gradients, no composite modes.

Glyph "😀" decomposition in COLRv0:
  Layer 1: circle_outline  → color[0] = #FFCC33 (yellow)
  Layer 2: eyes_outline    → color[1] = #000000 (black)
  Layer 3: smile_outline   → color[2] = #000000 (black)
  Layer 4: cheeks_outline  → color[3] = #FF9966 (orange-pink)

COLRv1 (2021)

COLRv1 extends COLR with gradients, composite modes, variable fonts, and parametric color palettes. This enables:

Smooth gradients (linear, radial, sweep)
Blend modes (screen, multiply, etc.)
Font variation axes (including color axes)

# Inspect a COLR font with fonttools
pip install fonttools

from fontTools.ttLib import TTFont
font = TTFont("NotoColorEmoji-Regular.ttf")

# Check for COLR table
if "COLR" in font:
    colr = font["COLR"]
    print(f"COLR version: {colr.version}")
    # List glyphs with color definitions
    if colr.version == 1:
        for glyph_name in list(colr.table.BaseGlyphList.BaseGlyphPaintRecord)[:5]:
            print(glyph_name)

Advantages of COLR

Scalable: Vector-based, renders sharply at any size
Small file size: Shares glyph outlines across variations
Variable font compatible: Supports wght, ital, and custom axes
COLRv1: Supported in Chrome 98+, Firefox 105+, macOS Ventura+

CBDT/CBLCCBDT/CBLC (CBDT)
Color Bitmap Data Table และ Color Bitmap Location Table — ตาราง OpenType สำหรับฝังอิโมจิ bitmap สีในไฟล์ฟอนต์: Bitmap Emoji

Used by: Noto Color Emoji (older versions), Android emoji font

CBDT (Color Bitmap Data Table) stores PNG or JPEG images directly in the font file. CBLC (Color Bitmap Location Table) provides an index of bitmap locations at different sizes.

CBLC structure:
  Size 16×16 → offset → CBDT PNG data
  Size 32×32 → offset → CBDT PNG data
  Size 64×64 → offset → CBDT PNG data
  Size 128×128 → offset → CBDT PNG data

Inspecting CBDT with fonttools

from fontTools.ttLib import TTFont
import io
from PIL import Image

font = TTFont("NotoColorEmoji.ttf")

# Extract the 128px bitmap for 😀
cblc = font["CBLC"]
cbdt = font["CBDT"]

# Find the glyph name for U+1F600
glyph_name = font.getBestCmap()[0x1F600]  # "emoji_u1f600"

# Access strike data (128px size)
for strike in cblc.strikes:
    if strike.bitmapSizeTable.ppemX == 128:
        if glyph_name in strike.indexSubTables[0].names:
            # Extract PNG bytes from CBDT
            bitmap_data = cbdt.strikeData[strike][glyph_name]
            img = Image.open(io.BytesIO(bitmap_data.data))
            img.save("grinning_face_128.png")
            break

Disadvantages of CBDT

Large file size: Noto Color Emoji is ~10MB because it stores PNGs at multiple sizes
Fixed resolution: Looks blurry at sizes not pre-baked into the font
No variable font support: Cannot animate or vary parameters

sbix: Apple's Bitmap Approach

Used by: Apple Color Emoji (macOS, iOS)

The sbix (Standard Bitmap Graphics) table is Apple's proprietary format. It stores PNG (or TIFF, JPEG) images per glyph, per size strike, similar to CBDT but with Apple-specific extensions.

sbix strikes (Apple Color Emoji):
  20px, 32px, 40px, 48px, 64px, 96px, 160px
  Each size contains PNG data per emoji glyph

Apple Color Emoji is not publicly distributable (it is part of macOS/iOS). You can inspect it on a Mac:

# Location of Apple Color Emoji on macOS
ls /System/Library/Fonts/Apple\ Color\ Emoji.ttc

# Extract info with fonttools
python3 -c "
from fontTools.ttLib import TTFont
font = TTFont('/System/Library/Fonts/Apple Color Emoji.ttc', fontNumber=0)
if 'sbix' in font:
    sbix = font['sbix']
    print(f'sbix strikes: {[s.ppem for s in sbix.strikes]}')
    print(f'Number of glyphs: {len(sbix.strikes[0].glyphs)}')
"

sbix Scalability

Apple augments sbix with vector outlines in the glyf table. The font renders the bitmap at small sizes and switches to a higher-resolution PNG at larger sizes. Some sbix glyphs also use dupe references to point to the same image in a different glyph.

SVG in OpenType

Used by: Older Firefox versions, some experimental fonts

The SVG table embeds SVG documents directly in the font, one per glyph or glyph range. This enables full SVG capabilities: gradients, filters, animations (in theory), and arbitrary paths.

from fontTools.ttLib import TTFont

font = TTFont("emoji-with-svg.ttf")
if "SVG " in font:
    svg_table = font["SVG "]
    for doc_list in svg_table.docList:
        svg_data, start_glyph_id, end_glyph_id = doc_list
        print(f"SVG for glyph IDs {start_glyph_id}–{end_glyph_id}")
        print(svg_data[:200])  # Print first 200 chars of SVG

SVG Table Status

Browser support for SVG-in-OpenType has narrowed. Firefox dropped it in favor of COLRv1. It is still available for specialized print applications (InDesign, Illustrator) that render color fonts via SVG.

Font Format Comparison

Format	Scale	File Size	Browser Support	Platform
COLRv0	Vector	Small	Excellent	Windows, Linux, Web
COLRv1	Vector + gradients	Small	Chrome 98+, Firefox 105+	Windows, Linux, Web
CBDT/CBLC	Bitmap	Large (~10MB)	Good	Android, Web
sbix	Bitmap	Large	Safari, Chrome	macOS, iOS
SVG-OT	Vector	Medium	Limited	InDesign, legacy Firefox

Color Font Rendering in CSS

Modern browsers support color fonts via CSS @font-face without special declarations. The browser automatically selects the best color table it supports:

@font-face {
  font-family: "NotoColorEmoji";
  src: url("/fonts/NotoColorEmoji-Regular.ttf") format("truetype");
}

.emoji-display {
  font-family: "NotoColorEmoji", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji";
  font-size: 32px;
  /* No special color-font CSS needed */
}

For COLRv1 specifically, you can control the active palette with font-palette:

.emoji-dark {
  font-palette: dark;
}

.emoji-custom {
  font-palette: --my-palette;
}

@font-palette-values --my-palette {
  font-family: "NotoColorEmoji";
  base-palette: 0;
  override-colors: 0 #ffcc00, 1 #ff6600;
}

Variable Color Fonts

COLRv1 enables a new class of fonts: variable color fonts, where color parameters can be animated or controlled by CSS:

@supports (font-variation-settings: "RNDM" 0) {
  .animated-emoji {
    animation: color-shift 2s infinite;
  }

  @keyframes color-shift {
    from { font-variation-settings: "FILL" 0; }
    to   { font-variation-settings: "FILL" 1; }
  }
}

The Bungee Color font and experimental emoji fonts from Google demonstrate this capability.

Practical Implications for Developers

Bundle size: If embedding an emoji font in a web app, COLRv1 (Noto COLRv1) is significantly smaller than CBDT Noto (~2MB vsVariation Selector (VS)
อักขระ Unicode (VS-15 U+FE0E และ VS-16 U+FE0F) ที่กำหนดว่าอักขระจะแสดงผลเป็นข้อความ (สีเดียว) หรืออิโมจิ (มีสี) ~10MB)
Rendering consistency: For cross-platform consistency, use a bundled web font rather than relying on OS system fonts
Subsetting: Use pyftsubset (fonttools) to extract only the emoji you need:

pyftsubset NotoColorEmoji.ttf \
  --unicodes="U+1F600,U+1F601,U+1F602,U+1F604" \
  --output-file="emoji-subset.ttf"

Explore More on EmojiFYI

See how specific emoji render across platforms: Compare Tool
Inspect emoji code point data: Sequence Analyzer
Emoji font and rendering terminology: Glossary
Access the emoji dataset: API Reference

How Emoji Fonts Work: COLR, CBDT, sbix, and SVG Font Tables

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