Issues with Android 4.4-5.x/6.x

I tried taking the .ttf from the release and replacing the current font, but the emoji do not show. A few of the emoji show as black and white (I'm not sure if it's all the black and white emoji or if only some work), but the rest just do not show up. The Oreo NotoColorEmoji font works fine, as do the Nougat emoji, so I'm pretty sure it's an issue with this font. (Just to test, I also tried the EmojiCompat font, and got the exact same results).

[C1710]

I know that there are some problems with using this font on a 4.4 device.
But when I tested it, only the ZWJ sequences didn't show up, so this is a bit confusing.
I can't promise anything – since I'm currently busy doing other things, but I'll try to have a look at it at the weekend.

[C1710]

But just for testing purposes:
Could you please tell me if these emojis work or not?

😂
🖖🏽
🤠
👩🏽‍💻
🤯
🥳
🍞🏼

Inside Firefox:

• 😂 is a black and white tears of joy
• 🖖🏽 is a dark skinned hand in a "V" (isn't that Star Trek or something?)
• 🤠 is a yellow blob cowboy
• 👩🏽‍💻 is a black and white woman, a dark skinned square, and a colored computer
• 🤯 is a yellow blob with a blowey-upy mushroom cloud head
• 🥳 is a yellow blob with a party hat and those things you blow and confetti
• 🍞🏼 is black and white bread and a light skinned square

If I copy and paste any outside Firefox, none show up (haven't tried Chrome though).

Here are all the emoji that show up in Gboard (all are black and white), separated by category:

• ✌✍❤❣
• ♨✈⭐❄
• ♠♥♦♣♟
• ☎✉✏✒✂
• ↗➡↘↙↖↕↔↩↪✡✝▶◀♀♂✔✖✳✴❇‼⁉©®™ℹⓂ🈁🈂🈷🈶🈯🉐🈹🈚🈲🉑🈸🈴🈳㊗㊙🈺🈵▪▫⚪⚫

In Firefox, ℹ and Ⓜ have circles around them but don't in Gboard, as do 🉐, 🉑, ㊗, and ㊙. Besides those, all the others from 🈁 to 🈵 have boxes around them in Firefox but not Gboard.

That was probably more than you needed, but I wanted to be sure.

[C1710]

Well, that looks like emojis which were already supported in 4.4 don't get overridden correctly.

So just to be 100% sure: You installed this font by copying NotoColorEmoji.ttf into your /system/fonts-directory and you tried an app which uses the EmojiCompat font (like Blobmoji Preview)?

Did you change any other font besides the emoji font? And btw, what device are you using? I only tested it on (almost) vanilla Android devices.

Oh, and that the hand, the woman in front of the computer and the light bread don't show up correctly seems to be an issue with KitKat not being able to display emoji sequences. This is something I already noticed.

[C1710]

Wait a minute... Which shape does the black and white Tears of joy emoji have?
Is it:

• a grey Blob?
• a circular emoji which has only a black outline?
• some kind of Android head with these two antennas?

While the first one would mean that there are issues with the color rendering of older emoji, the second one would mean that another (non-emoji) font is overriding these emojis and the third one would mean, that you somehow still have the pre-KitKat b/w emojis installed 🤔

I didn't try any special apps, just viewing it in Firefox, Octodroid, and MiXplorer. When I said I tried the EmojiCompat font, I meant I downloaded the NotoColorEmojiCompat.ttf file, copied it to /system/fonts, and renamed it to NotoColorEmoji.ttf to see if it worked better than the normal font. You're correct about the installation menthod. I'm using a Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 using the Acherom ROM (a TouchWiz based ROM), but I don't think it should affect it, because I downloaded and tested both the Nougat and Oreo emoji and they worked.

Edit: Just tried Blobmoji Preview and it didn't work at all. Though that might be a bug with EmojiCompat or Blobmoji Preview rather than Blobmoji.

[C1710]

Okay. That there's no difference between the standard and the EmojiCompat font when using them as your system font is normal.
I'm still confused that the other fonts work as I didn't change anything (besides some assets and some region flags) when it comes to the build tools.

That would mean it's rather unlikely that something went wrong with font priority.
If it is like that, you might check this thread about that issue. But this wouldn't explain why the other fonts work...

The Tears of Joy emoji is a circle, so the second one.

[C1710]

I just got an idea: There's one thing I altered which could cause such an priority issue which is not present for the other fonts:
As far as I know font names are not specified by their file name but by the name specified inside the font file. I'll need to check that, but I would suggest you to try out this modification of that XML file as described in the XDA thread I mentioned above but not with NotoColorEmoji but with Blobmoji, since I called the font like that (as far as I remember).

Nope, that thread didn't fix it. Though maybe that is because I don't have a fonts.xml, so I only changed it in fallback_fonts.xml? There is a system_fonts.xml, but NotoColorEmoji isn't in there, so I doubt it's a priority issue.
Edit: Just saw your new suggestion, will test.

[C1710]

I can only guess, but I think a font which isn't present in the main fonts configuration (which is the case for Blobmoji) will automatically get a priority which is much lower than all the other fonts. I'll try to add a fix which adds a new file to the fonts directory which has the actual name NotoColorEmoji, but currently I don't have very much time 😅

Renaming it in fallback_fonts.xml doesn't seem to have fixed it, so either I messed up (possible, especially since I couldn't completely follow the instructions), or you named it something besides Blobmoji (did you have some other name when you first forked?). I also tried renaming the font to Blobmoji.ttf, just in case the filename needed to match the name in the file.

[C1710]

Originally the font had the exact same name as Noto Color Emoji (I guess that's the name).

But the current name is definitely Blobmoji. I don't actually know how to set the font priority on Samsung devices correctly (I haven't done anything about that on any Android device I own) so I need to google it myself 🤷