Emacs Init: Font for Emoji

Set Font for emoji

put this in your Emacs Init File:

(progn

  ;; set font for emoji
  ;; if before emacs 28, this should come after setting symbols, because emacs 28 now has 'emoji . before, emoji is part of 'symbol

  (set-fontset-font
   t
   (if (version< emacs-version "28.1")
       '(#x1f300 . #x1fad0)
     'emoji
     )
   (cond
    ((member "Apple Color Emoji" (font-family-list)) "Apple Color Emoji")
    ((member "Noto Color Emoji" (font-family-list)) "Noto Color Emoji")
    ((member "Noto Emoji" (font-family-list)) "Noto Emoji")
    ((member "Segoe UI Emoji" (font-family-list)) "Segoe UI Emoji")
    ((member "Symbola" (font-family-list)) "Symbola"))))

Set Font for Other Languages

You should set a font for emoji and other unicode symbols or human languages. Especially on Mac and Microsoft Windows.

If you do not, whenever you open a file with lots characters that is not in current font, emacs will search a font for those characters, and may take 5 seconds.

script-representative-chars

Variable. Alist of scripts vs the representative characters. Each element is a cons (SCRIPT . CHARS). SCRIPT is a symbol representing a script or a subgroup of a script. CHARS is a list or a vector of characters. 〔see Emacs: Show Variable Value〕

Find a script supported in emacs by the variable script-representative-chars, then find out what's the font name in your operating system that supports that script. Then you can setup a font for the script in emacs, like this:

;; set font for cuneiform
(set-fontset-font
 t
 'cuneiform
 (cond
  ((eq system-type 'windows-nt)
   (cond
    ((member "Segoe UI Historic" (font-family-list)) "Segoe UI Historic")))
  ((eq system-type 'darwin)
   (cond
    ((member "Noto Sans Cuneiform Regular" (font-family-list)) "Noto Sans Cuneiform Regular")))
  ((eq system-type 'gnu/linux)
   (cond
    ((member "Noto Sans Cuneiform Regular" (font-family-list)) "Noto Sans Cuneiform Regular")))))

(set-fontset-font
 t
 'phoenician
 (cond
  ((eq system-type 'windows-nt)
   (cond
    ((member "Segoe UI Historic" (font-family-list)) "Segoe UI Historic")))
  ((eq system-type 'darwin)
   (cond
    ((member "Noto Sans Phoenician Regular" (font-family-list)) "Noto Sans Phoenician Regular")))
  ((eq system-type 'gnu/linux)
   (cond
    ((member "Noto Sans Phoenician Regular" (font-family-list)) "Noto Sans Phoenician Regular")))))

(set-fontset-font
 t
 'deseret
 (cond
  ((eq system-type 'windows-nt)
   (cond
    ((member "Segoe UI Symbol" (font-family-list)) "Segoe UI Symbol")))
  ((eq system-type 'darwin)
   (cond
    ((member "Apple Symbols" (font-family-list)) "Apple Symbols")))
  ((eq system-type 'gnu/linux)
   (cond
    ((member "Noto Sans Deseret" (font-family-list)) "Noto Sans Deseret")))))

(set-fontset-font
 t
 'shavian
 (cond
  ((eq system-type 'windows-nt)
   (cond
    ((member "Segoe UI Historic" (font-family-list)) "Segoe UI Historic")))
  ((eq system-type 'darwin)
   (cond
    ((member "Apple Symbols" (font-family-list)) "Apple Symbols")))
  ((eq system-type 'gnu/linux)
   (cond
    ((member "Noto Sans Shavian Regular" (font-family-list)) "Noto Sans Shavian Regular")))))

(set-fontset-font
 t
 'egyptian
 (cond
  ((eq system-type 'windows-nt)
   (cond
    ((member "Segoe UI Historic" (font-family-list)) "Segoe UI Historic")))
  ((eq system-type 'darwin)
   (cond
    ((member "Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs" (font-family-list)) "Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs")))
  ((eq system-type 'gnu/linux)
   (cond
    ((member "Aegyptus" (font-family-list)) "Aegyptus")))))