Variation Selector-191

VS191 is an invisible selector meant to request a registered drawn form of the East Asian character before it. In a registered pair, it specifies a form without changing the character's identity. The snapshot of Unicode's Ideographic Variation Database (IVD) dated 2026-08-03 lists no registered pair using VS191.

Text symbol

What 󠆮 means

It can request a particular drawn form of the character before it.

A variation sequence places the selector after a base character. Here, the base is an ideograph: a character used in Chinese, Japanese, and related scripts. Only a registered pair selects a form; an unsupported pair leaves the selector invisible and ignored.

It keeps variant forms within one character

Unicode added supplementary selectors in 4.0 (2003) so plain text could specify some glyph variants without assigning each a new character code; rich text can make a similar choice with a font or style.

The IVD registers independent ideograph-selector collections for reliable interchange; its first collection was registered 2007-12-14.

Part of the collection

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Variation Selectors

Questions people ask

Why does 󠆮 show as a box on some devices?

Not every system ships a font for the Variation Selectors Supplement block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.