73

In Apple's marketing materials, the company often refers to the Apple Watch as "Watch". If that last sentence displayed as "apple symbolWatch", congratulations! You're probably using an Apple device.

To demonstrate, here's what the Wikipedia page for Apple Watch looks like on an iPad.

Apple watch Wikipedia page viewed on iPad

Here's what that same section looks like on Windows 10.

Apple watch Wikipedia page viewed on a Windows PC

Occasionally, you can even see this happen on Stack Exchange when browsing Ask Different.

Misformatted Apple emoji on Ask Different

Is there any way to make the Apple logo  display properly on a Windows PC?

Edit: It's worth noting this issue happens in Google Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge, though the symbol looks different in each browser.

  • Google Chrome:
  • Mozilla Firefox:
  • Microsoft Edge:
Stevoisiak
  • 13,555
  • 39
  • 101
  • 154
  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/58251/discussion-on-question-by-steven-vascellaro-how-can-i-display-the--uf8ff-app). – DavidPostill May 05 '17 at 11:59
  • [Looks like I've managed to cause some confusion over on meta...](https://meta.superuser.com/questions/12393/emojis-dont-render-in-question-titles-but-do-render-within-questions) – Stevoisiak May 06 '17 at 22:54
  • FYI, if you happen to have certain (legacy, mostly no longer relevant) non-Unicode PUA-mapped Tibetan fonts installed, it doesn't appear as a box but as ཧྭོ. I consider that something of a browser and/or fontconfig bug (random fallback fonts should not get used for PUA characters) but it's probably yet another argument against using this ridiculous non-character. – R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE May 07 '17 at 02:14
  • 1
    Do you need the symbol to specifically be the Apple *logo*, or will any apple-shaped glyph (like or ) do? – user46971 May 07 '17 at 05:29
  • 1
    Weirdly enough, since the latest Chrome update (I've no idea which one), I started seeing the Apple logo, but only in the "Hot Questions" sidebar. (see https://imgur.com/a/5z0Xl) – zdimension May 07 '17 at 13:15
  • @R..GitHubSTOPHELPINGICE: Ah, that explains why FontForge shows random Tibetan construct characters as example glyphs for a lot of PUA codepoints. – Vikki Jan 16 '22 at 16:59

7 Answers7

108

In Firefox, the character appears in a box with the hexadecimal characters F8FF. U+F8FF is a private-use character code point, intended for specific applications that need to display specialized characters not specified by the Unicode standard. For example, a website's custom typeface may assign site-specific glyphs to private-use code points, and a mobile device's own fonts may use the code points for their own purposes.

These characters are by their very nature application-specific and most likely will not render correctly outside their source application.

bwDraco
  • 45,747
  • 43
  • 165
  • 205
  • 13
    [Apple platforms also support Private Use Area characters which are not cross-platform compatible.](http://emojipedia.org/apple/) they include two characters one is the Apple logo another is a Beats 1 logo. – Ramhound May 03 '17 at 01:46
  • 97
    So the Wikipedia article actually _shouldn't_ use U+F8FF, since it's almost certainly _not_ rendered as an apple on non-Apple systems – Tobias Kienzler May 03 '17 at 14:31
  • 9
    @TobiasKienzler Unicode doesn't contain any corporate logos, so there's nothing they can replace it with. – wizzwizz4 May 03 '17 at 17:38
  • 20
    @wizzwizz4 There's no point in having it at all. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Apple_Watch#First_sentence.2C_what_does_.22.28stylized_as_.EF.A3.BFWATCH.29.22_mean.2C_why_is_there_a_.EF.A3.BF – Tobias Kienzler May 03 '17 at 18:35
  • 9
    @wizzwizz4 They can replace it with an image. That's for example how they handled the symbol that the musical artist Prince briefly used as his stage name, in the third paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_(musician) – nitro2k01 May 05 '17 at 08:55
  • 2
    To add to what @wizzwizz4 said, adding corporate logos to Unicode and hence have font designres add a corresponding glyph to their fonts would cause either copyright problems for these font designers for exactly representing the logo; or similar legal problems for inaccurately representing the logo; or suggest that the logo is not copyright-worthy in the first place. – Hagen von Eitzen May 06 '17 at 15:43
  • 1
    @HagenvonEitzen Or imply endorsement of those companies; or cause Unicode to be sued; or essentially give some brands a monopoly due to their connection to Unicode; or set a precedent for more brand identity stuff to be added. – wizzwizz4 May 06 '17 at 17:01
51

The real question to you is, for what purpose you need it?

This character is Unicode F8FF, which is in the Private Use Areas and is not defined by the Unicode standard what it should be. So Apple in their own systems uses a font (or fonts) in which they placed the Apple logo at the F8FF location, but on Windows systems no normal font has this symbol, and certainly not in the same exact location.

So the answer to the question on how to display it in your browsers, the answer is that there isn't really a way to do that.

However - and here's where I add more than previous answers - if you just want to use this symbol on a Windows machine in different programs for typing and printing, there is a way to got the same symbol. Here's how:

  1. First, we need to open the Window Character Map app. So, just press Windows+R keys from keyboard to open Run window and then type the word charmap and hit Enter.
  2. This will open the Characters Map app, this built-in Windows app holds lots of special characters and symbols like Spade, Heart, Club, Diamond, Smiling faces and much more according to the font type. Let’s see how to type Apple logo symbol.
  3. Select font face “Baskerville Old Face” from Font drop-down menu. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see Apple logo in the characters list. enter image description here
  4. Select the Apple logo symbol, hit the “Select” and then “Copy” buttons to copy the Apple character to the clipboard.
  5. Now go back where you want to use this Apple symbol and Paste it by pressing Ctrl+V keys from the keyboard.

Note: this is not using the same F8FF glyph that Apple's fonts use, but instead it has the same symbol in a different Private Use Area, F000.

Yisroel Tech
  • 9,687
  • 3
  • 23
  • 37
  • 2
    I didn't specifically *need* the apple emoji for any specific purpose. I mostly just wanted to be able to read posts that used the symbol. It's good to know where to find the symbol if I ever need it though. – Stevoisiak May 03 '17 at 02:34
  • 29
    @EdmundReed: Nothing. The Private Use Area is for, well, Private Use, anybody can use it for anything. – Jörg W Mittag May 03 '17 at 07:58
  • 1
    @wizzwizz4, I have not come across such font. Wingdings has the (very old) Windows logo also as a PUA glyph, but 0xFF and not F8FF. – Yisroel Tech May 04 '17 at 01:40
17

The other answers already explain why you cannot display U+F8FF as an Apple logo on non-Apple systems. But for future reference:

If you would be in control of the website (which you're not on Wikipedia, nor on Ask Different), then you could add a web font to reliably display such icons on that website.

The well-known Font Awesome includes the Apple logo as fa-apple:

<link rel="stylesheet"
href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css">

...

<p><b>Apple Watch</b> (stylized 
as <i class="fa fa-apple" aria-hidden="true" title="Apple"></i>WATCH) ...</p>

<p>The Windows Logo (printed 
as <i class="fa fa-windows" aria-hidden="true" title="Windows logo"></i>) ...</p>

This will work in all modern browsers; you can have a look with yours.

In Font Awesome, the code point is not U+F8FF but U+F179, and fa-windows is U+F17A (both also in the private use area, like explained in other answers).

Arjan
  • 30,974
  • 14
  • 75
  • 112
  • 7
    I personally dislike unjustified use of (full) Web Fonts. I understand that some designers consider typography to be paramount, but from the perspective of users with slow machines/connections, they bloat up and slow down the page for no reason where a built-in system font could be used. Why not embed the Apple logo as a PNG or SVG picture? Or even create a custom version of the Web Font with just the symbols you needed the font for? The page will end up more lightweight this way. – Pabru May 05 '17 at 15:35
  • 1
    If you're going to use a web font, at least serve it from your own server rather than linking to a third-party font site. – R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE May 07 '17 at 02:29
  • 1
    @R.. Assuming you'd still be serving the full font then: can you explain why serving from your own server is better? Using a common CDN avoids having to download common web fonts such as Font Awesome for multiple websites. (The browser cache will be shared across websites that use the same CDN.) Also, many CDNs are faster than many low budget websites, and using a separate domain might benefit from browser limits on the maximum number of connections to a single domain. Of course, one could [add a fallback in case the CDN is not operational](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22196906). – Arjan May 07 '17 at 08:15
  • @Arjan: There are various reasons you shouldn't serve from a CDN. If they require you to use their CSS or worse JS rather than just linking to the font file from your own CSS, there are all sorts of ways that changes on their side could break your site, or that bugs in their code could translate into security compromises on your site and for your users. The CDN font is going to be complete, rather than just a few characters your site needs, so it will be larger and slower for the user's browser to load... – R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE May 07 '17 at 15:07
  • ...and it will require additional DNS lookups and connections to the CDN rather than being transferred across an existing connection to your server. It also breaks atomicity of breakage: it's possible for the CDN-served font to be down, but for your site to be up, in which case your site's rendering breaks. If you serve all resources yourself, it's all-or-nothing and never renders wrong. – R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE May 07 '17 at 15:09
  • Here is the icon on Font Awesome, Foundation, Ico Moon, etc https://glyphsearch.com/?query=apple – Ryan Nov 16 '18 at 21:25
  • Arjan> `If you would be in control of the website (which you're not on Wikipedia, nor on Ask Different)` Sure you can, just use a browser-extension like Stylish to add the font to the site(s). – Synetech Jun 16 '19 at 19:01
  • @Synetech, ...and replace all the occurences of the glyph with something like ``... – Arjan Jun 17 '19 at 07:43
7

Windows comes with an application called Private Character Editor. Open it, select the code F8FF from the last line and the last column and then draw in your own Apple logo as well as good or bad as you like.

You may have to restart the browser for the font to start working.

screenshot

Henri Vasserman
  • 71
  • 1
  • 3
3

I'm reading the question as if you go to the Wikipedia page—you want to see the the correct glyph displayed on your screen. To do this, I think you would have to find a font or create your own font with the Unicode point U+F8FF displaying the glyph, then install it into your font folder.

However this would mean if you go to a different Web page or an internal application which used U+F8FF - you would again see the Apple logo even if it was not appropriate.

For the question of which font you could use look at Which (default) fonts contain the Windows/Apple logo? which would then lead to exporting the Macintosh font and importing it into Windows - I don't have an Apple so I have not looked for an answer to if that is possible.

bwDraco
  • 45,747
  • 43
  • 165
  • 205
Ross
  • 1,296
  • 3
  • 12
  • 27
  • In the context of the Wikipedia page , being global public use that is true, there is no correct glyph. In the context of Private Use on the viewing computer - I think the Apple glyph is the one to use as the glyph for that code-point. – Ross May 03 '17 at 21:59
  • 3
    According to what logic? By definition, it can be _anything_. Just because it's not publicly accessible to the world doesn't mean it _has_ to look like the Apple logo. Indeed, quite the opposite. Simply do not use it outside of an application with strict control over the rendering of its own fonts. Period! – Lightness Races in Orbit May 03 '17 at 22:14
  • yes - now I think about it like that , I stand corrected. – Ross May 03 '17 at 22:18
3

U+F8FF in range of ConScript Unicode Registry, a volunteer project to coordinate the assignment of code points in the Unicode Private Use Area for the encoding of artificial scripts including those for constructed languages.

U+F8D0–U+F8FF is range for Klingon alphabets, and some fonts support it: code2000 font, constructium font, etc.

U+F8FF is "Klingon Mummification Glyph", and I see it in your question:

printscreen

So, U+F8FF is really not good idea for company logo =)

yalov
  • 151
  • 4
-7

I'll assume you're using Edge as that comes with Windows 10 out of the box. If that is true then I believe your issue is with edge and not Win10 at large.

Edge comes with little to no accessible font options/settings. This has to do with it's branding/status as a 'metro app,' which is only relevant because in most other fully featured browsers (incl. IE11) you'll find options to set how fonts are displayed and whether or not to force custom fonts or to allow a website to decide it's own font. The issue here is that the sites your viewing are attempting to display a font that windows 10 may not have. In this case I can confirm that in the case of Win10 pro that Baskerville Old Face is included and I believe that if you attempt to view this within a different browser you will see the apple logo render properly.

user724379
  • 3
  • 2
  • 1
    Whilst I'm also cross about Microsoft replacing much of Windows functionality with Metro apps (many of which don't work properly), this doesn't answer the question. Baskerville Old Face may include this glyph, but it is at a different codepoint (read: the image is for a different character), and this is more of a comment about Edge's lack of features. Also note that Baskerville Old Face is bundled with many Microsoft products. – wizzwizz4 May 03 '17 at 17:58