Features›Text›Emoji ZWJ sequences (2 cols)

Emoji ZWJ sequences (2 cols)

Category: text · Baseline: unicode · Tags: Unicode · Specification ↗

Zero Width Joiner (ZWJ) sequences combine multiple emoji into a single glyph. For example, 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 (family) is four person emoji joined with ZWJ characters. A terminal that handles ZWJ correctly renders this as a single 2-column wide glyph, not as four separate emoji.

How this is testedautomated
Write a ZWJ sequence (e.g., family emoji), verify it renders as a single 2-column glyph rather than separate emoji.

The same probe runs against headless backends (via Termless) and real terminal apps (via a daemon launched in each terminal). This lets us distinguish parser correctness from rendering correctness.

Analysis2026-04-06

Supported by 7 of 12 terminals (58%). Not supported by: Kitty, Terminal.app, Warp, Cursor, VS Code. Part of the Unicode baseline.

Supported by 9 of 14 backends (64%)

Terminal Applications

Terminal	Version	Support	Notes
iTerm2	3.6.9	✓ yes
Ghostty	1.3.1	✓ yes
VS Code		✗ no
Warp		✗ no
Cursor		✗ no
Terminal.app		✗ no

Headless Backends

Parser correctness only — a ✓ means the parser accepts the sequence.

Backend	Version	Support	Notes
Alacritty	0.26.0	✓ yes
Kitty	0.40.0	✓ yes
vt100.js	0.2.1	✓ yes
vterm	0.2.0	✓ yes
WezTerm	0.1.0-fork.5	✓ yes
xterm.js	5.5.0	✓ yes

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