Changing the UI font to a custom font makes emojis change

[pioneer]

Default UI font:

Roboto:

Steps to reproduce

• OS, DE: Manjaro/Cinnamon
• the nightly Riot-desktop build I'm using is https://packages.riot.im/debian/pool/main/r/riot-nightly/riot-nightly_2020070901_amd64.deb
• go to Settings -> Appearance -> Show advanced -> Use a system font
• tick the checkbox, type Roboto (the Roboto font should be installed)
• emoji reactions will become black and white

Expected result:

Although design-wise I'm not 100% sure which solution is the best, I believe changing the UI font should not lead to such an unexpected thing. Instead, either the look of emojis should not be changed, or the user can select the emojis look independently using one of the predefined packs, for example.

[pioneer]

I was given this link - https://blog.livthomas.net/adding-color-emojis-to-chrome-on-fedora/, and seems it's very relevant, but I haven't used it just because installing the following packages from AUR and restarting Riot helped without any additional action: noto-fonts-emoji-flags, noto-fonts-emoji-fontconfig.

[Pestdoktor]

You are overriding the entire stack with that setting, so for your desired result you'd have to append the fallback fonts again:
Roboto,Twemoji,Apple Color Emoji,Segoe UI Emoji,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif,Noto Color Emoji or something to that effect.

Maybe this should be done transparently by riot?

[geckolinux]

I'm also running into this on openSUSE Tumbleweed when trying to use the Ubuntu font. I don't mind the B&W emojis, but the problem is that some of them are wrong. For example, here there should just be 3 "facepalms" (nothing to do with Riot 😉 ) :

So from @pioneer 's link, do I understand that I would have to use a font that specifically has a color emoji subset? Or can I put more than one font in the field?

Would it be possible to just make Riot always use its default font for emojis?

[Pestdoktor]

Or can I put more than one font in the field?

Yes, put a comma-seperated list ordered by descending priority and it will use the first font which supports any given character.

[Pestdoktor]

#14494 could be solved independently by removing ← through  from Element's distribution of https://rsms.me/inter/#charset

[iav]

Workaround work for me on windows 10:
set font string Arial,Twemoji,Apple Color Emoji,Segoe UI Emoji
I have arial text and good emoji.

[maralorn]

For what it's worth: For me personally knowing that you can enter a list of fonts and not just one font into the field helped me a lot. If the tool tip could be a little bit more precise and maybe show the default setting that would probably help a lot.

[frakic]

Retested on both Element Web and Nightly 1.10.12 by adding Open Sans as a custom font.
Emojis appear different and some of them seem to be missing entirely:

The workaround, as mentioned above, is to set custom font to Open Sans,Twemoji,Apple Color Emoji,Segoe UI Emoji
That way I have Open Sans set as my default font and emojis look fine:

I say we leave this issue open but with low priority.

[CutestNekoAqua]

For you all who may wanna use noto emojis:
Roboto,Segoe UI Emoji,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif,Noto Color Emoji

[t3chguy]

Related #9790