A byproduct of Android’s fragmentation issue is that emoji support on the platform is also a complete mess. Despite Google supporting Unicode 9 with Nougat, older versions of the OS are left in the dark when it comes to emoji support.

Due to this, some incompatible emoji end up being shown as empty boxes in Android. Google is finally getting around to fixing this problem for good with the release of Android 8.0 (a.k.a Android O).

The company is introducing a new EmojiCompat support library which will allow apps to display all the latest emoji irrespective of the Android version they are running on. Google is achieving this by pointing apps to a font which contains all the latest emoji glyphs instead of rendering them on the device itself.

The problem, however, is that since every Android OEM uses their own emoji set, it is unclear which version of the newer incompatible emoji will be shown on older devices. Emojipedia says that it is possible that a mix of both emoji set will be shown. As their mock-up shows, new incompatible emoji will end up using Google’s Noto Color Emoji font, while compatible emoji will end up being rendered using the emoji set included by the device OEM.

While not ideal, this move will at least mark the end of empty emoji boxes for Android users. There’s only one catch here though: developers will have to bake support for the EmojiCompat support library in their apps.