| Variation Selectors | |
|---|---|
| Range | U+FE00..U+FE0F (16 code points) |
| Plane | BMP |
| Scripts | Inherited |
| Assigned | 16 code points |
| Unused | 0 reserved code points |
| Unicode version history | |
| 3.2 (2002) | 16 (+16) |
| Unicode documentation | |
| Code chart ∣ Web page | |
| Note: 12 | |
Variation Selectors is a Unicode block containing 16 variation selectors used to specify a glyph variant for a preceding character. They are currently used to specify standardized variation sequences for mathematical symbols, emoji symbols, 'Phags-pa letters, and CJK unified ideographs corresponding to CJK compatibility ideographs. At present only standardized variation sequences with VS1–VS4, VS7, VS15 and VS16 have been defined; VS15 and VS16 are reserved to request that a character should be displayed as text or as an emoji respectively.34
These combining characters are variation selector-1 (for U+FE00) through variation selector-16 (U+FE0F), and are abbreviated VS1 – VS16. Each applies to the immediately preceding character.
As of Unicode 17.0:5
- CJK compatibility ideograph variation sequences contain VS1–VS3 (U+FE00–U+FE02)
- CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A and B variation sequences contain VS1 (U+FE00) and VS2 (U+FE01)
- Emoji variation sequences contain VS16 (U+FE0F) for emoji-style (with color) or VS15 (U+FE0E) for text style (monochrome). This use is deprecated; newer emoji versions of existing dingbat characters have a separate code point for the emoji form, such as U+1FAAF 🪯 KHANDA whose dingbat form is U+262C ☬ ADI SHAKTI.678
- Basic Latin, Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms, Manichaean, Myanmar, Myanmar Extended-A, Phags-pa, and mathematical variation sequences contain only VS1 (U+FE00)
- Egyptian Hieroglyphs variation sequences VS1–VS7 (U+FE00–FE06) are used to rotate specific signs
- VS8–VS14 (U+FE07–FE0D) are not used for any variation sequences
| Variation Selectors[1] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) | ||||||||||||||||
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
| U+FE0x | VS 1 |
VS 2 |
VS 3 |
VS 4 |
VS 5 |
VS 6 |
VS 7 |
VS 8 |
VS 9 |
VS 10 |
VS 11 |
VS 12 |
VS 13 |
VS 14 |
VS 15 |
VS 16 |
Notes
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This list is continued in the Variation Selectors Supplement.
History
The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Variation Selectors block:
| Version | Final code pointsa | Count | L2 ID | WG2 ID | Document |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.2 | U+FE00..FE0F | 16 | L2/97-260 | Hiura, Hideki; Kobayashi, Tatsuo (1997-12-01), Plane 14 Variant Tag | |
| L2/98-039 | Aliprand, Joan; Winkler, Arnold (1998-02-24), "2.D.4 Variant Tag Mechanism", Preliminary Minutes - UTC #74 & L2 #171, Mountain View, CA - December 5, 1997 | ||||
| L2/98-277 | Hiura, Hideki; Kobayashi, Tatsuo (1998-07-29), Plane 14 Variant tag | ||||
| L2/98-281R (pdf, html) | Aliprand, Joan (1998-07-31), "III.E.3 Variant Tagging (III.E.3)", Unconfirmed Minutes – UTC #77 & NCITS Subgroup L2 # 174 JOINT MEETING, Redmond, WA -- July 29-31, 1998 | ||||
| L2/00-187 | Moore, Lisa (2000-08-23), "Variation Selector", UTC minutes -- Boston, August 8-11, 2000 | ||||
| L2/01-268 | Freytag, Asmus (2001-06-27), Variant selector | ||||
| L2/01-309 | Jenkins, John (2001-08-08), Variation selectors and Han | ||||
| L2/01-324R | Davis, Mark (2001-08-17), Variation Selectors [document has incorrect L2 ID number] | ||||
| L2/01-295R | Moore, Lisa (2001-11-06), "88-M5", Minutes from the UTC/L2 meeting #88 | ||||
| L2/02-154 | N2403 | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2002-04-22), "7.12", Draft minutes of WG 2 meeting 41, Hotel Phoenix, Singapore, 2001-10-15/19 | |||
| L2/17-086 | Burge, Jeremy; et al. (2017-03-27), Add ZWJ, VS-16, Keycaps & Tags to Emoji_Component | ||||
| L2/17-103 | Moore, Lisa (2017-05-18), "E.1.7 Add ZWJ, VS-16, Keycaps & Tags to Emoji_Component", UTC #151 Minutes | ||||
| |||||
References
References
- "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
- "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
- "StandardizedVariants.txt". Unicode Consortium. 2015-11-20. Retrieved 2016-08-28.
- "Emoji Variation Sequences". Unicode Consortium. 2020-09-18. Retrieved 2020-11-18.
- "UCD: Standardized Variation Sequences". Unicode Consortium.
- Ewell, Doug (2022-09-26). "Process of transforming existing glyphs to emojis via variants". Unicode Mailing List Archives. Archived from the original on 2023-09-01. Retrieved 2023-09-01.
- Bettencourt, Rebecca; Ewell, Doug. "Proposal to disunify Symbols for Legacy Computing from emoji" (PDF). UTC L2/23-252. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2024-05-26. Retrieved 2023-11-17.
- Holbrook, Ned (2022-04-14). "Emoji Subcommittee Repo for UTC #171 (2022Q2)" (PDF). Unicode Consortium. p. 2. UTC L2/22-066. Retrieved 2025-10-11.