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I have a string. It contains a lot of unicode characters (mostly the flags). These are not supported on Windows. Is it possible to preview them anywhere using some online service?

Ideally, I want to enter the full string and preview it instead of searching for equivalent image for each character?

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    Define "preview"? Can you see these? 🏳️🇦🇫🇦🇮🇦🇹🇧🇪🇧🇼🇧🇮🇰🇾 If so, there's your preview.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Sep 17, 2021 at 15:21
  • Preview = Convert the string to an image so I can see the characters regardless of support by my device.
    – user1279381
    Commented Sep 17, 2021 at 15:22
  • You 'convert the 'string' to an image by having the fonts/glyphs for those characters.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Sep 17, 2021 at 15:23
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    I hadn't realised Windows was so backward as to not support emoji - but I just confirmed it. Maybe eventually they'll catch up to the 21st century. I've no idea how you see glyphs you can't see, in that case. Windows version of my comment above vs the view I get normally - i.sstatic.net/kgj9w.png
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Sep 17, 2021 at 15:30
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    Um. @Tetsujin's actually correct. System reads only character codes. To display a code it needs to be mapped to a visual character. What character is mapped depends on which font is used - compare WinDings and Arial. So font provides the OS support for any glyphs. Try https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Flags.html
    – Peregrino69
    Commented Sep 17, 2021 at 15:36

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Flags are represented in Unicode as a 2 character string; for example the flag of Andorra is represented by Unicode pair 1F1E6 1F1E9.

  • This page shows a list of flags with their corresponding Unicode pairs
  • You can search for characters / emojis / flags / etc. by Unicodes and Unicode pairs in this page

For a system to be able to show them correctly, it needs a font that can show these extended character tables. Basically a font that can display emojis. These have been standard in Android- and iOS-devices for quite some time. They're also installed in MacOS (at least since Mojave) and some Linux distros. Windows seems to be still lacking these fonts.

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