is-emoji-supported is a library allowing you to detect if the running device supports the specified emoji.

As of March 2020, the Unicode Standard includes a total of 3 304 emojis. The latest version introduced 117 new ones and vendors have troubles implementing them. In fact there are no operating system supporting all of them. Therefore there is a need to know if a specified emoji isn't supported by the browser to fallback to an image.

Install with yarn:

$ yarn add is-emoji-supported

Or install using npm:

$ npm i is-emoji-supported

$ npm test

• Basic usage
• Usage with your own cache handler
• Fallback to images

The most basic usage is to use the function directly to detect is the current device support the emoji.

import {isEmojiSupported} from 'is-emoji-supported';

if (isEmojiSupported('🦄')) {
  alert('Houra 🦄 is supported');
} else {
  alert('No support for unicorn emoji yet');
}

This library is doing pixel comparison to determine if an emoji is supported. This check can be slow so there is a memory cache implemented. For some reasons you may want to use your own cache implementation to store the result in either localStorage, IndexedDB or anything else for persistent cache. You only need to match the Map interface.

import {setCacheHandler} from 'is-emoji-supported';

const key = 'emoji-cache';
const cache = JSON.parse(localStorage.getItem(key) || {});

setCacheHandler({
  has: (unicode: string) => unicode in cache,
  get: (unicode: string) => cache[unicode],
  set: (unicode: string, supported: boolean) => {
    cache[unicode] = supported;
    localStorage.setItem(key, JSON.stringify(cache));
  }
});

In most of the cases, you will want to fallback to images to handle unsupported emojis. The best way for this is to build an object with a fallback to all supported images. You can build your own or use the one given by JoyPixel, Twemoji or others services.

import React from 'react';
import {isEmojiSupported} from 'is-emoji-supported';

const emojiMap = {
  '🦄': {
    alt: 'unicorn',
    src: '/images/unicorn.png'
  },
  ...
};

export const Emoji = ({ unicode }) => {
  const attrs = emojiMap[unicode];

  return !attrs ? null : isEmojiSupported(unicode) ? (
    <span role="img" aria-label={attrs.alt}>
      {unicode}
    </span>
  ) : (
    <img {...attrs} />
  );
};