Variation Selectors (Unicode block)

See also: Variation Selectors Supplement (Unicode block)

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 (2002)	16 (+16)
Unicode documentation
Code chart ∣ Web page
Note:

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.

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 17.0:

• 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 🪯 <reserved-1FAAF> whose dingbat form is U+262C ☬ <reserved-262C>.
• 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

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 17.0

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	Count	L2 ID	WG2 ID	Document
3.2	U+FE00..FE0F	16	L2/97-260
			L2/98-039
			L2/98-277
			L2/98-281R (pdf, html)
			L2/00-187
			L2/01-268
			L2/01-309
			L2/01-324R
			L2/01-295R
			L2/02-154	N2403
			L2/17-086
			L2/17-103