Variation Selectors (Unicode block)

Variation Selectors is a Unicode block containing 16 Variation Selector format. They are used to specify a specific 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, VS2, VS3, VS15 and VS16 have been defined; VS15 and VS16 are reserved to determine whether or not a character should be displayed as an emoji.[3]

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	16 (+16)
Note: [1][2]

These combining characters are named variation selector-1 (for U+FE00) through to variation selector-16 (U+FE0F), and are abbreviated VS1 – VS16. Each applies to the immediately preceding character.

As of Unicode 11.0:[4]

• 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)
• Basic Latin, Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms, Manichaean, Myanmar, Myanmar Extended-A, Phags-pa, and mathematical variation sequences contain only VS1 (U+FE00)
• VS4–VS14 (U+FE03–U+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 1.^ As of Unicode version 13.0

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:

Version	Final code points[lower-alpha 1]	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
Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names

References

1. "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2016-07-09.
2. "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2016-07-09.
3. "StandardizedVariants.txt". Unicode Consortium. 2015-11-20. Retrieved 2016-08-28.
4. "UCD: Standardized Variation Sequences". Unicode Consortium.