Google expands open-source Noto Emoji project with new 3D collection

Announced on World Emoji Day, Google's latest Noto Emoji 3D release offers developers, designers and creators freely available three-dimensional emoji assets, supporting richer digital experiences while reinforcing the company's commitment to open-source design and accessibility.

Google has introduced a three-dimensional version of its open-source Noto Emoji library, giving developers, designers and content creators access to a new collection of 3D emoji assets for use across digital platforms. The announcement, made to coincide with World Emoji Day, builds on the company's existing Noto Emoji project, which aims to provide a consistent and openly accessible emoji library for applications, websites and software.

The latest addition transforms familiar emoji into three-dimensional designs featuring depth, lighting and texture while preserving their instantly recognisable appearance. By making the collection openly available, Google intends to offer creators greater flexibility in integrating expressive visual elements into a wide range of digital experiences.

Unlike platform-specific emoji libraries that vary across operating systems, the Noto Emoji project provides a common design language that can be freely adopted and customised by developers. The introduction of 3D assets further broadens the project's capabilities while maintaining its open-source foundation.

Open-source resources for the developer community

Google said the new collection has been designed to support diverse use cases, including mobile applications, websites, presentations, educational content, games and animations. Developers and designers can modify the assets to align with their own products, reducing the need to rely on proprietary emoji libraries and simplifying licensing requirements.

The company believes that making high-quality emoji assets openly available can encourage greater collaboration across the software development and design communities. The initiative is also expected to benefit independent developers, educators and organisations seeking consistent visual resources without platform restrictions.

Building on the Noto ecosystem

The Noto project has long been one of Google's major open-source initiatives, developed to support a wide range of languages and writing systems while ensuring consistent typography across devices. Noto Emoji extends the same philosophy to visual communication by offering a standardised emoji collection that can be used across multiple platforms.

The launch of Noto Emoji 3D represents the next stage in the project's evolution, combining consistency with enhanced visual detail to make digital communication more engaging without changing the familiar look of widely used emoji.

Google's announcement coincides with World Emoji Day, which celebrates the growing role of emojis in online communication. With billions of people using emoji daily across messaging platforms, social media and workplace collaboration tools, the company sees the expanded Noto Emoji project as another step toward supporting richer, more expressive and accessible digital interactions while strengthening the broader open-source ecosystem.