Can’t find my national flag? Northern Ireland.

JordyShore wrote:

I have checked with Unicode Consortium. Below is the response.

Q: Why can’t I find my national flag in my mobile application or on my smart phone?

A: For concerns about the emoji and flag symbols available in any particular application or mobile platform, please contact the manufacturer. Their software determines what characters are available on your device.

To ask Apple to add this to their emoji font, go to

http://www.apple.com/feedback

Northern Ireland isn’t a country. Neither is Wales. Neither is Scotland. Until Unicode adds these flags Apple can’t show them either. There have been proposals to add flags of subdivisions, and on the unicode.org site I found several proposals to add subdivisions, but they haven’t been acted on as of now.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

Until Unicode adds these flags Apple can’t show them either.

Actually Unicode has already set up the flag standards. It is up to Apple and other vendors to decide whether to include a particular flag in their emoji fonts. Scotland and Wales are present for Apple I think.

https://emojipedia.org/flag-for-northern-ireland-gbnir/

From your link this is what Unicode says:

This Flag Sequence has not been Recommended For General Interchange (RGI) by Unicode. Expect limited cross-platform support.

In other words, each implementor could have a different bitmap for it. Is that what people want?

Lawrence Finch wrote:

In other words, each implementor could have a different bitmap for it. Is that what people want?

Implementors already can and often do have different bitmaps for any emoji, e.g.

https://emojipedia.org/pistol/

It's really decisions by the major implementors to include a flag in their fonts which determines whether it will become "rgi". For some flags there are political reasons why they are not yet included, for others (for example the 52 US state flags), it is presumably just a lack of demand/interest.

There is a font from an individual which does have a number of these flags, including the Ulster Banner:

https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Flags.html

but I don't know if it will display on a Mac (aside from when the web site temporarily sends it down as a webfoot), perhaps only Windows.

JordyShore wrote:

Scotland, England & Wales have flag emoji leaving just Northern Ireland out.

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

If Stormont could agree on a flag, you would probably get its emoji in standard fonts. Now that it's back after 3 years absence, it may be possible...

JordyShore wrote:

the Ulster Banner. It’s may not be official

When that or a replacement does become official, you will have your emoji. Until then, it's extremely unlikely, but you can use the feedback link provided earlier to argue your case with Apple.