What is Unicode?
Unicode is the master list that assigns a unique number to every character in nearly every writing system on Earth — plus symbols and emoji. It's the reason “é”, “漢” and “🔥” can all appear in the same message, on any device.
The problem it solved
Before Unicode, dozens of incompatible encodings each mapped numbers to characters differently. Text written in one system turned to garbage (“mojibake”) in another. Unicode unified them: one giant, shared table where each character gets one permanent number.
Code points
Each character is a “code point,” written like U+0041 (the letter A) or U+1F600 (😀). Unicode has room for over a million code points and has assigned around 150,000 so far, across scripts, symbols, and emoji.
Unicode vs UTF-8
Unicode says which number a character is; encodings like UTF-8 say how to store that number as bytes. They're different layers — a common source of confusion.
Frequently asked questions
Is Unicode the same as UTF-8?
No. Unicode assigns numbers to characters; UTF-8 is one way to encode those numbers as bytes. UTF-8 is the most common encoding of Unicode.
How many characters are in Unicode?
Around 150,000 are currently assigned, with capacity for over 1.1 million code points.
Are emoji part of Unicode?
Yes — emoji are standard Unicode characters, which is why they're portable across devices.