Microsoft emojis go open source for anyone who wants to change them

Microsoft just surprised us all by announcing that most of its emoji pack has become open source and Anyone can modify them for completely free use.

The news broke in The Verge, who, in an interview with John Friedman, vice president of design and research at Microsoft, said the remote work made them open their eyes to the problem.

“The idea started to emerge, and it was consistent with our belief and vision that the more we use open source inside and out, the more great products we can create and the more relevant we can be to all of humanity.”Explain.

We are talking about total 1538 emoji, which can now be incorporated by anyone into their own logos, icons, chats, etc. completely free of charge. Of course, as we already mentioned, this is not 100% of the total, since some, such as the mythical Clippy emoji, as well as other emoji introduced by Microsoft last year, do not count.

Many media outlets see this as a nice gesture on the part of the company, since Microsoft rarely makes its tools available for others to use as they wish.

The possible reason for all this seems completely uninterested and arises from the almost complete acceptance of remote work by companies, which implies a significant increase in the use of emoji in employee chats.

The fact that they are now available to everyone is good news for those who want to use and mix emoji in their work, opening up a range of up to a thousand possibilities.

Note that Microsoft also makes them available to users in various formats such as SVG, PNG and JPG., so they’re really accessible to anyone who wants to use them. If you want to get down to business and get your emojis, you can do so on Figma or GitHub.