how do emojis work?

Question

like, Apple emojis look different on non-Apple devices. why/how is that?

In: 1

Answer 1

Have you ever noticed that on some websites or in some applications, text looks wildly different? This is because of different fonts – basically just a way of telling your computer exactly what shape each character is supposed to be. So you can have the same text, but the letters look kinda different depending on which font a website or application has chosen. (See for example [FontSquirrel](https://www.fontsquirrel.com/) for a list of fonts)

Now consider this: Emojis are just complicated characters. Depending on which font is used to render them, they will look different from device to device, or even between applications and/or websites.