---
date: 2023-07-13
title: Getting Emoji to Work in KDE on Debian
tags:
- Debian
- GNU+Linux
- KDE
---
This is going to be a relatively short and uninteresting post for most, it'll
just document how to get emoji to work in KDE.
While it will work with most applications out of the box, this doesn't appear to
work in Qt applications by default, including the notification panel. As I use
my notifications for messages I get from my work chat, and I dislike seeing the
squares, I set out to find the solution. I've had to string together a couple
sources of information to get to the correct setup, and this blog post intends
to show just the useful bits. So here goes!
You'll need an emoji font (in my case `fonts-noto-color-emoji`), add two
configuration files for fontconfig, rebuild the fontconfig cache, and most
likely log out and back into KDE. Installing the emoji font is probably the easy
bit and won't need any additional explanation I hope. So let's get started on
the first configuration file, which will enable the Noto emoji font to be used,
and also force it to be used in favour of other emoji fonts if any application
was using that specifically. I have it saved as
`/etc/fonts/conf.d/75-noto-color-emoji.conf`.
```xml
emoji
Noto Color Emoji
sans
Noto Color Emoji
serif
Noto Color Emoji
sans-serif
Noto Color Emoji
monospace
Noto Color Emoji
Symbola
Apple Color Emoji
Noto Color Emoji
Segoe UI Emoji
Noto Color Emoji
Segoe UI Symbol
Noto Color Emoji
Android Emoji
Noto Color Emoji
Twitter Color Emoji
Noto Color Emoji
Twemoji
Noto Color Emoji
Twemoji Mozilla
Noto Color Emoji
TwemojiMozilla
Noto Color Emoji
EmojiTwo
Noto Color Emoji
Emoji Two
Noto Color Emoji
EmojiSymbols
Noto Color Emoji
Symbola
Noto Color Emoji
```
The second configuration file, saved as `/etc/fonts/conf.d/local.conf`, simply
adds the Noto emoji font as a fallback. This enables the use of it when an emoji
is going to be rendered.
```xml
Noto Color Emoji
```
And after this, a relog of your (graphical) session should be all that is needed
in order to make it work. You can easily test it with `notify-send`, or trying
to render some emoji in `konsole`.