Unicode Variation Selector

By Xah Lee. Date: .

What is Unicode Variation Selector

  1. Variation Selectors is used to indicate a desired presentation. (such as skin color for emoji, or whether to show a symbol as emoji or text. [see Unicode: Emoji vs Text] )
  2. Variation Selectors are invisible characters.
  3. A Variation Selector is placed immediately after another character, to indicate a preferred rendering.
  4. There are 16 Variation Selectors, from codepoint U+FE00 to U+FE0F. They are abbreviated as VS1 to VS16.

Variation Selector 15 and 16 are used to indicate text rendering or emoji rendering, for those character that have both presentation.

“U+FE0E: VARIATION SELECTOR-15”
Indicator for text rendering.
“U+FE0F: VARIATION SELECTOR-16”
Indicator for emoji rendering.