Please try running the following command in a terminal and let me know if it resolves the issue. Do NOT run it with sudo. It will create a symlink to the Noto Color Emoji font in your local user’s font directory. The shopt command will allow it to get the .uuid file and the change to shopt will only persist for that terminal session. This is one long command; for an accurate test, please don’t break it up. Just copy, paste, run:
shopt -s dotglob; mkdir -p ~/.fonts/truetype/noto; ln -s /usr/share/fonts/truetype/noto/* ~/.fonts/truetype/noto
Thank both for providing the requested information. It was very helpful.
Sorry for the delay in my response. I don’t have as much time to dedicate to this as I would like.
This bug feels tied to fontconfig, but something seems off.
One time I had Chromium working when Brave wasn’t, and one time I had Brave working when Chromium wasn’t. If this was strictly a fontconfig issue, that shouldn’t be possible.
Even so, fontconfig remains the most likely culprit in my opinion although I can’t explain it.
I also found that reinstalling Noto Color Emoji is not a permanent fix. Emoji on my hypervisor and VMs all broke again over time.
So far in my testing, the symlink method above has survived reboots and updates, so I’m hopeful it will work for you as well. The more people testing it, the faster we can find out if it works, or if it too breaks.