When a Newer Emoji Shows Up as a Box: Causes and Fixes
If an emoji shows up as a box, an X or a question mark, your device usually does not know it yet. Causes, why some split in two, fixes and substitutes.
You've probably had the experience of seeing an empty box (□), a box with an X or a box with a question mark at the end of a friend's message where an emoji should be. The sender definitely picked a cute face, but all that's left on your screen is a meaningless box.
This phenomenon, where only a box appears in the place a character should go, is called "tofu" in English because it looks like a block of tofu. Even the name of Noto, the free font made by Google, comes from "No more tofu," so it's an old problem. Fortunately, the cause is almost always the same, and the fix isn't hard.
Device updates and emoji versions
An emoji isn't a photo file but a single "character." When you put 🫠 in a message, what's actually sent isn't a picture of a melting face but only the number U+1FAE0, and turning that number into a picture is the job of the emoji font on the receiving device.
The Unicode Consortium adds new emoji every year and gives each batch a version number like Emoji 14.0 or Emoji 15.0. But when a new version is announced, the pictures don't appear on every device right away. Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft each draw their own designs, and only when they ship them in an operating system update do they show up on screen.
So if your device receives an emoji from a newer version than its emoji font, it can't find a picture for that number and draws an empty box instead. A box usually means "this emoji is newer than your device."
Why you see a box when the sender sees the emoji
If everyone else in the same chat sees the emoji fine and only you see a box, their operating systems are likely newer. The sender picked an emoji from the keyboard on their own device, so of course it looks fine to them, and they can't know the receiving device's situation.
The reverse happens too. You send 🫨 (shaking face) from a latest iPhone and it shows as a box on an Android tablet that's a few years old or a PC where updates have been put off. That's why it's hard to be sure the emoji you sent got through properly.
The results can vary by app, too. Some messengers include their own emoji images inside the app instead of the operating system font, so even on the same device, the emoji can show in one app and as a box in another app or in a web browser.
When it splits into pieces instead of a box
Some emoji show up split into two or three emoji instead of a box. 🐦🔥 (phoenix) shows as 🐦🔥, 🍋🟩 (lime) as 🍋🟩 and a family emoji as several separate people.
These emoji are "combined emoji" made by joining several existing emoji with an invisible joiner character (ZWJ). Newer devices merge the combination into a single picture, but a device that doesn't know the combination lays the parts out separately. An emoji with a skin tone specified showing up as a default yellow hand plus a colored square works on a similar principle.
Splitting is still better than a plain box, since you can guess the meaning from the parts. This is designed that way on purpose, a mechanism so the meaning gets across as much as possible even on old devices.
When new emoji arrive on each platform
New emoji are usually finalized around September each year with the new Unicode version. When each company works them into an update differs by company and by year, but it generally follows a flow like this.
- iPhone and iPad (iOS): In recent years, new emoji were often added in the mid-cycle update that arrives in the spring after the announcement (for example 16.4, 17.4, 18.4).
- Google Pixel: Google makes its emoji font itself, so it tends to be relatively quick, arriving with an Android update or feature update.
- Samsung Galaxy and other Android: They have to be included in the maker's own updates like One UI, so they're often later than Pixel. Older models stop getting update support and sometimes never receive the new emoji at all.
- Windows: Windows 11 gets new emoji through updates to the Segoe UI Emoji font, but the timing is on the late side. Windows 10 has more or less stopped adding new emoji, so recent emoji show up as boxes there especially often.
- Mac (macOS): It tends to be added around the same time as iOS.
For reference, Windows by default doesn't show flag emoji as pictures but as two letters like "US" or "JP." That isn't a malfunction but a trait of the Windows default font.
How to get rid of the boxes
Update the operating system and apps
This is the surest way. On a phone, check for a software update in Settings and bring it to the latest version. The emoji font is part of the operating system, so updating only the app often doesn't fix it, but for a messenger that uses its own emoji, updating the app alone can solve it.
On a PC, try switching browsers
If emoji on a web page show up as boxes on Windows, opening it in a different browser is an option. Firefox, for example, bundles its own emoji font, so it sometimes shows emoji the Windows default font doesn't know. On Linux, installing a color emoji font like Noto Color Emoji fixes it in most cases.
If the device can't be updated
For a device whose support has ended, there's unfortunately no good way to see new emoji. In that case, the only way is to find out what was sent. Copy the box by long-pressing it and paste it into this site's search box, and from the search results you can go to that emoji's page and check its name and a picture in each design.
How to check the latest emoji on this site
At the top of each emoji page on EmojiCanvas, it says which version the emoji was added in (for example, Emoji 14.0) and the year it was added. If you check the version before sending to someone, you can roughly gauge whether it will show on their device.
Also, since many devices don't support emoji added from Emoji 16.0 on, this site shows them as Noto emoji images instead of characters. Even if your device doesn't know the emoji yet, you can preview what it looks like. On the same page, you can also compare three designs: Noto, Twemoji and Fluent.
As a rough guide, if a device hasn't been updated for several years, emoji from Emoji 14.0 (2021) onward are more likely to show up as boxes.
Emoji that work well as substitutes
When you don't know whether the other person's device is old, especially when you send to your parents or a work contact, it's safe to swap in an emoji that's been around for a long time. Here are common recent emoji and their alternatives.
- 🫠 Melting face (Emoji 14.0) → 😅 for embarrassment, 🥵 for heat
- 🥹 Face holding back tears (Emoji 14.0) → Swapping in 🥺 gives a similar "choked up" feel.
- 🫶 Heart hands (Emoji 14.0) → 🥰 or ❤️
- 🫡 Saluting face (Emoji 14.0) → 👍 along with a short reply like "On it"
- 🫨 Shaking face (Emoji 15.0) → 😱 for shock, 😵 for chaos
You can substitute combined emoji by the same principle. Send just one part, like 🔥 instead of 🐦🔥 and 🍋 instead of 🍋🟩, and you at least don't have to worry about it showing as a box or in pieces.
- 😅Embarrassment, in place of 🫠
- 🥺Being choked up, in place of 🥹
- 🥰An expression of affection, in place of 🫶
- 👍"Understood," in place of 🫡
Last checked 2026-10-21