Showing emoji in a UILabel?

Question

Not sure what I'm missing here, and searching hasn't helped me. I want to display emoji characters in a UILabel, and this isn't doing it:

UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc] init];
label.font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"AppleColorEmoji" size:16.0];
label.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%C", 0x1F431];
// ... etc.

Works fine with other non-letter unicode characters, e.g. chess pieces, but not with any emoji characters that I have tried.

Answer 1

To use Emoji's just press Control+command+space (⌃⌘Space). No need of using unicode for emoji.

Answer 2

You are probably not using the correct encoding for your emoji characters. For instance in your example I think you are looking for something like this:

label.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%C", 0xe04f];

Have a look at this table to get the encodings you need.

Answer 3

In xcode just go to the top bar and click EDIT > EMOJIS & SYMBOLS and an emoji box will pop up and you can literally add it to any text in the app, even works in the interface builder if you need to add it to the text of a uilabel there.