One document for every emoji
Google renders emoji in Gboard, Meet, Gmail, Chat, and Android itself. For years each team made the same design decisions separately. The emoji specification records those decisions once, for all of Google as a central source of truth. I maintained it from 2022 to the present.
What's in it
The spec covers category order, search, recents, and the states a single emoji can have: skin tones, gender variants, mirrored, monochrome. When Unicode introduced bidirectional emoji, the spec defined how a runner faces left in Google products. The handshake has 26 combinations of two hands; the spec documents all 26.
Where it's used
If you've reacted in a Google Meet call, picked an emoji in Gmail or Chat, or typed one on Gboard, you've used the spec. It also defines the behavior of the Android library emoji picker available to third-party apps, and the themed emoji states in Android's emoji wallpaper, shown at Google I/O.
"...express themselves more authentically using emoji variations in Gmail." Google Workspace Updates
"The emoji don't stay static like they do on Zoom." Emma Roth, The Verge
Every team uses it
Teams use the spec without my involvement. Anyone at Google (a Meet designer, a Gboard engineer, someone on a product I hadn't worked with) can read it and build correct emoji behavior without a meeting.
"...an inclusive and unified emoji experience... without building emoji pickers from scratch." Android Developers
Keeping it current
Unicode releases new emoji every year; I keep the specification up to date.
