`unicode-range` CSS at-rule descriptor

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It's been available across browsers since September 2016.

The unicode-range CSS descriptor sets the specific range of characters to be used from a font defined using the @font-face at-rule and made available for use on the current page. If the page doesn't use any character in this range, the font is not downloaded; if it uses at least one, the whole font is downloaded.

Syntax

/* <unicode-range> values */
unicode-range: U+26; /* single code point */
unicode-range: U+0-7F;
unicode-range: U+0025-00FF; /* code point range */
unicode-range: U+4??; /* wildcard range */
unicode-range: U+0025-00FF, U+4??; /* multiple values */

Values

single code point: A single Unicode character code point, for example U+26.
code point range: A range of Unicode code points. So for example, U+0025-00FF means include all characters in the range U+0025 to U+00FF.
wildcard range: A range of Unicode code points containing wildcard characters, that is using the '?' character, so for example U+4?? means include all characters in the range U+400 to U+4FF.

Description

The purpose of this descriptor is to allow the font resources to be segmented so that a browser only needs to download the font resource needed for the text content of a particular page. For example, a site with many localizations could provide separate font resources for English, Greek and Japanese. For users viewing the English version of a page, the font resources for Greek and Japanese fonts wouldn't need to be downloaded, saving bandwidth.

Formal definition

Formal syntax

Examples

Using a different font for a single character

In this example, we create a single <div> element, with a text string that includes an ampersand that we want to style with a different font. To make it obvious, we will use a sans-serif font, Helvetica, for the text, and a serif font, Times New Roman, for the ampersand.

In the CSS we are in effect defining a completely separate @font-face that only includes a single character in it, meaning that only this character will be styled with this font. We could also have done this by wrapping the ampersand in a <span> and applying a different font just to that, but that is an extra element and rule set.

HTML

<div>Me & You = Us</div>

CSS

@font-face {
  font-family: "Ampersand";
  src: local("Times New Roman");
  unicode-range: U+26;
}

div {
  font-size: 4em;
  font-family: "Ampersand", "Helvetica", sans-serif;
}

Result

Specifications

Specification
CSS Fonts Module Level 4 # unicode-range-desc

Browser compatibility

	Desktop					Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Opera	Safari	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on iOS	Samsung Internet	WebView Android	WebView on iOS
`unicode-range`	1	12	36	15	3.1	18	36	14	3	1.0	4.4	3