Unicorn

The 🦄 unicorn emoji as a looping Lottie animation from Google's Noto Emoji Animation set.

🦄 Unicorn is one of the animated emoji in Google's Noto Emoji Animation set — the same unicorn emoji (U+1F984) drawn as a short looping Lottie animation. Lottie files are vector, so the animation stays sharp at any size and is usually much lighter than a GIF or a video.

🦄 is the unicorn emoji, part of Unicode's Animals & Nature group, added in Emoji 1.0 (2015). Unicode's keyword list links it with “face”.

Where the animated Unicorn works best

Websites and landing pages — a looping 🦄 adds motion to a hero, a feature card or an empty state without a video file.
Apps and product UI — success, error and onboarding screens feel less static with a small animated emoji next to the message.
Presentations, videos and social posts — Google also publishes GIF and WebP versions of each animation for tools that cannot play Lottie.

Embed Unicorn in your project

Pick the snippet that matches your stack. Every snippet loads the same Lottie file from Google's CDN, so there is nothing to host.

Lottie JSON URL

Plain URL. Drop into any Lottie-compatible renderer.

https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/e/notoemoji/latest/1f984/lottie.json

<lottie-player> web component

Zero-build HTML. Works in any modern browser.

<script src="https://unpkg.com/@lottiefiles/lottie-player@latest/dist/lottie-player.js"></script>
<lottie-player
  src="https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/e/notoemoji/latest/1f984/lottie.json"
  background="transparent"
  speed="1"
  style="width: 160px; height: 160px"
  loop
  autoplay>
</lottie-player>

HTML + lottie-web (CDN)

Manual loadAnimation() call. Full control over loop, speed, segments.

<div id="lottie-unicorn-1f984" style="width:160px;height:160px"></div>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/bodymovin/5.12.2/lottie.min.js"></script>
<script>
  lottie.loadAnimation({
    container: document.getElementById("lottie-unicorn-1f984"),
    renderer: "svg",
    loop: true,
    autoplay: true,
    path: "https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/e/notoemoji/latest/1f984/lottie.json"
  });
</script>

React + lottie-react

TypeScript component. Fetches the JSON on mount.

import Lottie from "lottie-react";
import { useEffect, useState } from "react";

export function Unicorn1f984() {
  const [data, setData] = useState<unknown>(null);
  useEffect(() => {
    fetch("https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/e/notoemoji/latest/1f984/lottie.json").then((r) => r.json()).then(setData);
  }, []);
  if (!data) return null;
  return (
    <Lottie
      animationData={data}
      loop
      autoplay
      style={{ width: 160, height: 160 }}
    />
  );
}

Best practices

Respect prefers-reduced-motion: pause the animation and show the plain character 🦄 for people who turn motion off.
Lazy-load the player below the fold so the animation library does not slow down the first paint.
Keep the original file: Google updates the animations in place, so linking to its copy keeps yours current.
Credit the source wherever you use it, as the CC BY 4.0 licence requires.

Animated emoji FAQ

What does the animated 🦄 unicorn emoji mean?: 🦄 is the unicorn emoji, part of Unicode's Animals & Nature group, added in Emoji 1.0 (2015). Unicode's keyword list links it with “face”.
Can I use the animated unicorn emoji commercially?: Yes, with credit. Google publishes Noto Emoji Animation under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0), which allows personal and commercial use — in apps, websites and videos — as long as you credit Google, for example “Noto Emoji Animation by Google, CC BY 4.0”.
Where does the animation file come from?: From Google's own CDN: https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/e/notoemoji/latest/1f984/lottie.json. DBEmoji does not host or change the file; your browser loads it from fonts.gstatic.com when you open this page.
Can I send the animated 🦄 in WhatsApp, iMessage or Discord?: Not as this animation. Messaging apps send the plain Unicode character 🦄 and draw it in their own style, and only some apps animate certain emoji themselves. To share this motion, use the GIF or WebP version, or embed the Lottie file in a website or app.