Android Emoji Compatibility

There is a support library introduced in Android to support the emoji backward compatibility which is EmojiCompat. It prevents the app from showing missing emoji characters in the form of ☐, which indicates that the device does not have a font to display the text.

How to configure this library

• Downloadable fonts configuration

With Downloadable fonts configuration, the emoji fonts are downloaded at run time on first request, if they do not exist on the device. To use the downloadable fonts configuration:

a) First you need to add the following support library in the build.gradle file of application

compile "com.android.support:support-emoji:$version"

b) Now init the EmojiCompat with the font request inside your Application class

class MyApplication: Application() {

    override fun onCreate() {
        super.onCreate()
        val fontRequest = FontRequest(
                "com.google.android.gms.fonts",
                "com.google.android.gms",
                "Noto Color Emoji Compat", R.array.com_google_android_gms_fonts_certs)
        val config = FontRequestEmojiCompatConfig(this, fontRequest)
        // other config settings......
        EmojiCompat.init(config)
    }
}

• Bundled fonts configuration

With bundled fonts configuration, your app already has the package that includes the font with the embedded metadata. To use the bundled fonts configuration:

a) First you need to add the following support library in the build.gradle file of application

compile "com.android.support:support-emoji-bundled:$version"

b) Initialise the EmojiCompat using bundled configuration

class MyApplication : Application() {

    override fun onCreate() {
        super.onCreate()

        val config = BundledEmojiCompatConfig(this)
        EmojiCompat.init(config)
    }
}

Now the Application is ready to use the EmojiCompat library.

How to use this library

• With Widgets

a) you need to replace your EditText, TextView, Button with the following widgets

EditText -> android.support.text.emoji.widget.EmojiEditText

TextView -> android.support.text.emoji.widget.EmojiTextView

Button -> android.support.text.emoji.widget.EmojiButton

b) if you are using AppCompat like AppCompatEditText, AppCompatTextView, AppCompatButton then you need to add the following EmojiCompat library to support AppCompat

compile "com.android.support:support-emoji-appcompat:$version"

and now replace your widgets to

AppCompatEditText -> android.support.text.emoji.widget.EmojiAppCompatEditText

AppCompatTextView -> android.support.text.emoji.widget.EmojiAppCompatTextView

AppCompatButton -> android.support.text.emoji.widget.EmojiAppCompatButton

• Without Widgets

val processed = EmojiCompat.get().process("neutral face \uD83D\uDE10");

now pass the processed CharSequence to your View.

For more info you can read the official documentation at the following link

Emoji Compatibility | Android Developers

Sample Code

deepak786/EmojiCompatBundledFontSample

deepak786/EmojiCompatDownloadFontSample