Bring Country flags to Windows!

[FANMixco]

It's time that Microsoft brings country flags support. Pretty much every other Operating system (OSs) like Android, iOS, macOS, etc. has emojis for each country, but for any mysterious reason, Windows has never done it! 🇵🇱🇪🇸🇪🇺

Source: https://emojipedia.org/flag-poland/

Source: https://emojipedia.org/flag-european-union/

### Tasks

[jgarcianewemage]

only flags available are the political kind approved by overlords

[FANMixco]

Quote from somewhere:

The reason is a concession from Microsoft to the Chinese government. The CCP does not accept the use of Taiwan flag emoji. Microsoft decided not to display any emoji country flags at all and thus evaded a political position on the One China issue.

I'm pro-Taiwan, but until this is solved, you can just restrict its creation or don't show it in other countries like China and its dependencies HK and Macau. What's more, if you feel this is discriminative, you have at least 10 other countries with limited recognition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_limited_recognition

[hkienle]

This official explanation is not particularly enlightening, but here it goes:

Clippy isn’t included in the open source emoji set 😩. I know, and I’d personally love to but due to (legal speak, legal speak, legal speak), we can’t open-source trademarks. For the same reason, our country flags, video game, and technologist emoji also won’t be available. https://medium.com/microsoft-design/designing-in-the-open-source-5c62be73a599

[FANMixco]

This official explanation is not particularly enlightening, but here it goes:

Clippy isn’t included in the open source emoji set 😩. I know, and I’d personally love to but due to (legal speak, legal speak, legal speak), we can’t open-source trademarks. For the same reason, our country flags, video game, and technologist emoji also won’t be available. https://medium.com/microsoft-design/designing-in-the-open-source-5c62be73a599

The "official" explanation makes no sense:

... we can’t open-source trademarks. For the same reason, our country flags ...

For a simple reason, the country flags don't exist in Windows! (Windows Key + .)

Either they are being planned or the "official" answer was wrongly written. Microsoft cannot open source something it hasn't even created yet.

[wilsontulus]

Great idea! It's have been a long struggle to get flag emojis work natively on Windows, especially since Chromium browsers are known to only load system fonts through a whitelist (specified in the source code: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/master/third_party/blink/renderer/platform/fonts/win/font_fallback_win.cc#L99) so simply by adding a third-party emoji font with flags wouldn't work. Only ways are by using Firefox (since the browser came with Twemoji which have every single flags in the emoji set) or by tweaking a Noto Color Emoji font to disguise as Segoe UI Emoji with the caveat of some applications (including Firefox, sadly 😓) not supporting it due to Google's decision of color font formats. More extreme way is by tweaking Chromium yourself to make it recognize Noto Color Emoji (or any fonts you like to add), with the caveat of being restricted to only OSS Chromium browsers (e.g. stock Chromium, Brave, etc) and you have to compile every update which is kinda time-consuming... I hope this suggestion goes well in the near future 😊

[FANMixco]

Great idea! It's have been a long struggle to get flag emojis work natively on Windows, especially since Chromium browsers are known to only load system fonts through a whitelist (specified in the source code: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/master/third_party/blink/renderer/platform/fonts/win/font_fallback_win.cc#L99) so simply by adding a third-party emoji font with flags wouldn't work. Only ways are by using Firefox (since the browser came with Twemoji which have every single flags in the emoji set) or by tweaking a Noto Color Emoji font to disguise as Segoe UI Emoji with the caveat of some applications (including Firefox, sadly 😓) not supporting it due to Google's decision of color font formats. I hope this suggestion goes well in the near future 😊

Please vote for the idea :D

[Mgrmjp]

Maybe in Windows 12!

[TaylorTWBrown]

Either give us flag emojis, or I will personally protest on the lawn of Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Satya Nadella. This is nuts! At least make the font and let us sideload it.

[olliefr]

@FANMixco you are not wrong, the official explanation does not make any sense at all!

Check this out: https://github.com/microsoft/fluentui-emoji/issues/105#issuecomment-1793381202

I think Microsoft should stop ignoring the needs of the many to please the whims of the few. Apple and Google products have country flags. People use them all the time, all over the world!

[Majestic7979]

Microsoft, go fuck yourself. Being polite doesn't work. Other manufacturer can display ALL emojis and not turn this political. Screw you for caving in to politicians.