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.^[3][4]

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.^[6][7][8]
• 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

This list is continued in the Variation Selectors Supplement.

See also

• Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs § Emoji modifiers
• Variant form (Unicode)

History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Variation Selectors block:

References