Above: A selection of new designs for previously released emoji as featured within EmojiOne 4.0.
Extensive revisions to its emoji offerings is, at this stage, the norm for EmojiOne. Each of the vendor's updates have included hundreds of changes to their designs, both big and small.
Last year we cited the 🍣 Sushi emoji as an example of this. EmojiOne's version of the popular Japanese foodstuff had at that stage undergone four major revisions in three years. With this update the design has been updated once more, albeit in a more subtle manner.
Above: A depiction of the 🍣 Sushi emoji's EmojiOne design history. The 4.0 version has had its coloration changed and more grains of rice highlighted underneath the fish slices compared to the 3.1 version.
Another example of this is the 👹 Ogre, which has also been updated in EmojiOne 4.0.
Smiley face emojis have all undergone modifications to their shading: they now feature each a gradient on the circular yellow form. Take 🤠 Cowboy Hat Face, for example.
Hand gestures now all have a gradient and a dark outline, reminiscent of the current Google design set. Below 🙌 Raising Hands is shown as an example of this change.
🔫 Pistol has had its design updated, but remains as a realistic firearm within the core EmojiOne design set.[1]
EmojiOne also adds characters for the emoji components used to create each of the hair styles which brings the total of new emojis to 161 in this release.
Release
EmojiOne 4.0 is out now. Like EmojiOne 3.0, this release is available on a freemium basis, with licensing required for some but not all usage types.
EmojiOne 4.0 is free for personal use, on the web, or as an option in apps. A premium license is, however, required if EmojiOne 4.0 designs are to be used in print or commercial advertising. EmojiOne is now branding licensing for physical consumer goods as JoyPixels.
While the realistic gun is the default design of the 🔫 Pistol emoji in EmojiOne 4.0, the company also offers a water pistol design option for licensees. ↩︎
Facebook has a lot on its plate right now, but add new emoji designs to the list. A new glossier emoji design is on the way, and is already showing for some users.
First appearing back in June 2018, these new designs arrived unannounced, for what appeared to be a very small subset of Facebook users. Dropping the flat-color designs introduced in 2017, the new design is closer to that offered by Apple: glossy, and with hints that these could in fact be 3D-rendered characters.
Above: New, glossier emoji designs are showing for a number of Facebook users (right) replacing the current Facebook designs (left).
As of last week, more users appear to have begun seeing this rollout[1], though it does not seem to be widespread at this stage. The new set does not cover Emoji 11.0, nor does it currently replace every existing emoji.[2]
This marks the second major emoji redesign for the main Facebook emoji set in the past 18 months, with Facebook last overhauling its emoji designs in early 2017.
What's interesting about this update is the similarity to the new (Facebook-owned) WhatsApp emoji designs first seen in 2017. Both appear to be inspired by Apple's more recent design choices (glossier, 3D or 3D-like, lots of detail), but far from being mere copies, these do all have their own design style and considerable attention to detail.
Whether the two emoji sets are related in any way is yet to be seen. For context on Facebook's emoji changes in recent years:
October 2017: Facebook discontinues Messenger emojis
June 2018: Users report new emoji designs on Facebook.com
August 2018: More users start seeing this update
Above: Five different designs have been used for 💩 Pile of Poo on Facebook platforms.
Time will tell which Facebook platforms these new designs are used on, and if they do in fact replace the short-lived current Facebook set.
Release
Facebook has confirmed to Emojipedia the existence of the new designs, but at the time of publication had declined to share further detail about whether these are intended to replace the emojis shown on Facebook, Messenger, or other Facebook-owned platforms such as WhatsApp or Instagram.
Until further detail is provided, consider this rollout part of an ongoing design test, something Facebook is known for doing with many elements of its app and website. Should this emoji set replace the main Facebook set in the future, more detail will be provided.
As it stands today, many iOS users won't be familiar with any of the above emoji sets, as Facebook chooses to use native Apple emoji designs for those using Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp for iPhone. Those most likely to see these updates will be using these products on Android, or the web.
Are you seeing the new Facebook emoji designs? Let us know!
Samsung has today released its latest flagship device: the Galaxy Note 9, which is the first release from Samsung to include support for Emoji 11.0. New emojis shipping on this device include a cold face, hot face, and pleading face.
This is noteworthy in and of itself, as prior to 2018 Samsung were noteably slower than other vendors in delivering emoji updates.
What doesn't change with these releases is that despite the prompt addition of new emoji support for new devices, many older Samsung phones are provided with these software updates slowly, or not at all.
New
Samsung Experience 9.5 features all 157[3] new emojis featured within Emoji 11.0. These new emojis include hair styles[4], superhumans, animals and foodstuffs.
Above: The four new hair style emojis: red hair, curly hair, grey hair and bald.[4:1]
🦸 Superhero and 🦹 Supervillain are new in this update, and in a first for this emoji compared to other platforms: each have a gender-inclusive design that is neither strongly masculine or feminine.
As per the spec, separate sequences exist for the versions of these emojis for women and men.
Above: New Superhero and Supervillain emojis on Samsung Experience 9.5.
Above: New animal emojis in Samsung Experience 9.5.
In the food and drink category, six new emojis have been added, including 🥮 Moon Cake and 🥯 Bagel.*
Above: New entries in the food and drink category on the Galaxy Note 9.
Emoji 11.0 also features multiple new objects relating to science, sports and domestic living. All new emojis featured in Samsung Experience 9.5 can be viewed here.
Changed
The majority of emojis look the same in this release as all previous releases. Only one emoji has noticably changed appearance which is the ♾️ Infinity emoji which changed its color from gray to blue.[3:1]
Additionally, 👁️🗨️ Eye in Speech Bubble emoji does not appear to be supported in Samsung Experience 9.5.
It is presently unclear if its removal was intentional or not, but the disappearance of certain emoji designs is not unknown to Samsung users. It's possible this is a bug, and we could see it returned in a future update.
🇺 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter U also still oddly displays as a "V" instead of a "U", though regional indicator letters are not intended be displayed in isolation - they are intended solely for the creation of flag emojis.
Release
Samsung Experience 9.5 is available from today, coming included by default on the newly-released Samsung Galaxy Note 9.
Wider rollout of this update to other Samsung devices is expected over the coming weeks and months, though its availability with vary by location, device and mobile phone carrier.
Samsung has confirmed this update will be made available to devices which get the Android 8.1 Oreo updates, which at the time of writing means only devices released in 2018. The Galaxy S8 released in 2017 is not currently receiving these updates, and its unclear if or when this may change.
Users are advised to get in touch with Samsung or their carrier to see if or when they plan to support this update on their own device.
Above: A selection of new emojis available on new Samsung devices. Image: Samsung / Emojipedia Composite.
While the Unicode name for this emoji's code point specifies three hearts, Samsung has opted to show four heats. This echoes Emojipedia's original sample image for this character, designed by Joshua Jones. In practice, the concept conveyed is the same, regardless of the number of hearts. ↩︎
The ♾️ Infinity has had an emoji design option on Samsung devices since 2013, based on the Unicode “Permanent Paper Sign” character introduced to devices in 2005. However, this emoji was not recommended for general interchange (RGI) until the release of Emoji 11.0 earlier this year. ↩︎↩︎
In this month's Emoji Wrap podcast Rick Moby from EmojiOne discusses emojis on the Nintendo Switch, tough pistol decisions, and why doesn't anyone know how to hug?
Each month I send a newsletter containing topics in the emoji world[1] - some quirky, some news and reporting. Then we discuss it on the podcast.
This month, I was pleased to be joined by Rick Moby, and you can listen here:
Subscribe using your preferred podcast app so you get the next episode automatically:
Now sent to over 15,000 people and you can enter your email here if you also want to join. Your email is only used for this single newsletter, and you can unsubscribe at any time. ↩︎
Emoji designs from Japanese carrier SoftBank are now showing on Emojipedia. These archives catalog emojis that were distributed on SoftBank devices from 2006—2016.
Many of the emojis shown in these sets pre-date emoji being added to the Unicode Standard, and as such these have been mapped to their modern Unicode counterparts.
Above: The most recent emoji designs from SoftBank, prior to this set being discontinued. Image: Softbank / Emojipedia screenshot.
The original SoftBank emoji set dates back to 2006[1] and features distinct 15x15 pixel-art designs which in some instances include animation.
Above: Animated emojis in SoftBank's original emoji set. Image: SoftBank / Emojipedia composite.
Each SoftBank emoji update (2010, 2012, 2014) released after the original set features increases in resolution, detail, and like all emoji sets, often includes completely different colors or other design choices.
While most of the smileys in the first release were edge-to-edge faces that filled the available space, from 2010 onward the majority move to the circular smileys we know and use on all platforms today.
Releases from 2012 onward include more shading, and no longer include animation.
These designs are effectively the precursor to Apple Color Emoji: the emoji font that began shipping on iPhones since iPhone OS 2.2 in 2008.
The reason for the similarity between the SoftBank 2006 emoji set and the iPhone 2008 emoji set is that SoftBank was the exclusive iPhone partner for Apple in Japan at the time: SoftBank was the only carrier to have iPhone 3G available to their customers.
Given this, it was important for Apple's emoji set to be compatible with SoftBank's.
Above: An emoji keyboard showing on a SoftBank phone. Photo: Jeremy Burge.
Over time emojis sets from Apple and SoftBank diverged, and in 2016 SoftBank announced they would no longer be updating their own emoji designs.
It's worth noting that SoftBank didn't have the first emoji set[2] in Japan; though arguably the designs created by SoftBank have been more influential in how emojis look today than any other vendor since.
By way of emoji convergance around Apple's emoji designs, preceded by Softbank's emoji designs, many vendors today have emojis that are more similar to Softbank's from 2006 than their own sets from a decade later.
Think emojis are all just fun and games? Then you haven’t met one that manifests some of our deepest, darkest fears 😱. It wants to give you a balloon 🎈. It wants to charm you with juggling 🤹 at your birthday party 🎂. It wants to lure you under its big top 🎪. It’s 🤡, or the Clown Face emoji.
The red, comically large smile of 🤡 Clown Face may not bring happiness to all screens, but one thing is for sure: We certainly find the 64-bit buffoon entertaining in one way or another. Let’s go behind the face-paint 💄 with some Emojiology of 🤡 Clown Face.
🔤 Meaning
Depicting a classic circus clown, 🤡 Clown Face marks content related to clowns, including performers, circuses, birthdays, and other venues and activities associated with them. Very often, the emoji stands in for a metaphorical clown, or fool. 🤡 Clown Face can also express a range of tones and feelings, including the silly, strange, scary, or sarcastic.
Across platforms, 🤡 Clown Face resembles a circus or birthday clown, such as the iconic Bozo, Ronald McDonald, or, for many, Stephen King’s It.
Above (left to right): Bozo the Clown, Ronald McDonald, and Pennywise from Stephen King's It from the 1990 miniseries.
🤡 Clown Face features white or whitish face makeup, a red nose, an exaggerated red smile, and two tufts of curly hair (red or blue) on an otherwise bald head. Most vendors depict blush on its cheeks. Several platforms, such as Apple and Samsung, illustrate outsized eyes lined with blue. Google and WhatsApp display more stylized eye makeup (stars or diamonds) while Facebook adds a miniature hat.
Above: How Clown Face displays across major platforms. Primary differences are hair color and eye design.
For its 2018 4.0 version, EmojiOne brought its 🤡 Clown Face design more in line with other major vendors. Under version 2.2.4, EmojiOne had given it a more realistic appearance with a full wig of blue hair, partial white makeup, and a proportional, open-mouth smile. Under 3.0–3.1, the emoji was more impressionistic, notable for its blue bowler hat capped with a yellow flower.
Above (left to right): Clown Face on EmojiOne versions 2.2.4, 3.0–3.1, and 4.0.
A cartoonish design didn’t make 🤡 Clown Face any less terrifying upon its release—or at least performatively so. News of its debut was met with ironic horror in the press, riffing on a popular fear of clowns, or coulrophobia, that spread starting in the 1970–80s.
A June 2016 article on tech hub The Next Webwarned in its headline: “The clown emoji is coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Another major tech website, CNET, ratcheted up the dread: “Do not send this emoji to anyone under any circumstances. Its cruel smile and lifeless eyes mask an unholy soul of pure, unspeakable evil.”
Other outlets almost universally described 🤡 Clown Face, it seemed, as a “creepy clown.” It didn’t help that Apple first supported 🤡 Clown Face under iOS 10.2 in December 2016, right on the heels of a so-called clown panic that fall, when there were menacing sightings of people dressed up as evil clowns all over the world.
🤡 Clown Face spiked on social media again in 2017 with the film It, the first big screen adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel of the same name, whose bloodthirsty, blood-curling clown Pennywise caused many a nightmare. Trailers and theatrical posters for the film also featured an ominous red balloon, making Balloon 🎈 a natural pairing with 🤡 Clown Face online for all things It.
Elsewhere in scares, the 2018 comedy film Blockers mocked moral panics over sexting—and the secret language teens are always feared to be using—in a scene when parents decipher a group text revealing their daughters’ pact to lose their virginity on prom night. The conversation is encoded entirely in emoji, and the 🤡 Clown Face makes an incongruous appearance. As one father explains it to a bewildered mother: “That means she’s down to clown,” a slang expression implying the daughter is willing to engage in some sexual tomfoolery.
So, how are young people actually using 🤡 Clown Face? Many superimpose it on the faces of their exes or former friends when sharing old pictures on apps like Snapchat. This not only blots out a past partner or pal but also presents the person as a metaphorical clown, or fool—a move as unsubtle as the bright makeup and bold features of clowns themselves. What’s more, a quick look around social media will show that this use of 🤡 Clown Face isn’t just a dose of adolescent attitude. Adults extensively use 🤡 Clown Face to insult someone or something as clownish, i.e., idiotic or contemptible in some way.
it be the funniest shxt ever when women post old pics with ppl they not friends with no more & use some kinda censor to block their face. The clown emoji is my fav one to look at 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Clowns aren’t entirely unlovable, for all the pies 🥧 we throw in their faces. They still hold a reputation for general zaniness, and so we see texters and tweeters occasionally using 🤡 Clown Face to mark the tone of a message as goofy or quirky, sarcastic or ironic, or just downright weird, as we’ll see in the following section.
There are 3 levels of weird:
1. Remotely weird but not creepy like a strange coincidence or something ☠
2. Fun loving weird where people make you laugh with their weirdness 🤡
3. Then there is get the fuck away from me psychopath weird! People straight outta book 🔪
🤡 Clown Face is a two-act emoji. The first act is literal, with the emoji used for real clowns or similar performers as well as associated venues (e.g., circuses, birthdays, hospitals, rodeos) and activities (e.g., juggling). Here, 🤡 Clown Face may be paired with other circus- or entertainment-related emoji, such as Peanuts 🥜, Elephant 🐘, or Performing Arts 🎭.
The first clown to wear whiteface makeup and paint on large smiling red lips was English performer Joseph Grimaldi, born #OTD in 1778. Learn about him and other famous clowns in this list. 🤡 https://t.co/SERrQnc8kZpic.twitter.com/wVE4RE9Gq6
We had a #Clown for my little #boy's #birthday! 😂 His big brother decided that he wanted to be a clown for the occasion! 🤡 #HappyBirthday my little Dean! 🎈 I will post a video of the birthday cake on my YouTube channel, so subscribe and be on the lookout! 🎂 #makeup#costumepic.twitter.com/Z491HpSk5Y
This past Saturday, #Shriners Clowns Bill (Railz) MacKinnon and Craig (Doc) Kazin celebrated Marion Rogers' 90th #birthday with her! Marion is an enthusiastic member of the Belchertown-based "Shivering Shamrocks" who have raised significant funds for our hospital! 🤡🎉🎈 pic.twitter.com/Q3HCoFRe1G
When its comes to actual clowns, however, you’ll likely see 🤡 Clown Face representing an evil clown, whether as a costume or fictional character. This is especially common around Halloween.
Evil clowns lead us to the second act of 🤡 Clown Face: its figurative applications, thanks to the various associations clowns have in the popular imagination. 🤡 Clown Face often conveys creepy behavior or scary feelings.
Every guy in my dm’s trying to be respectful but come off creepy... “I’ll give you a massage if your back hurts ANYTIME”. yeah bro I want one of your massages 😓🤡
Silliness and foolishness, though, are often the target of judgment, and so 🤡 Clown Face very frequently dismisses something or someone as a clown, as in a moron, dolt, or other such disliked figure. On social media, strong critics of US President Donald Trump regularly refer to him as 🍊 🤡, or the Orange Clown.
Your only announcing that your deleting your Instagram because u want attention n ppl telling u not to do it.... which ultimately makes u a bozo 🤡
Finally, perhaps due to the forced-seeming, off-putting cheerfulness of clowns—look no further than Samsung’s 🤡 Clown Face design—people occasionally use 🤡 Clown Face to communicate a kind of ironic detachment, with a sense of the strange or bizarre in some situation or behavior.
Our relationship to clowns in emoji form seems as complex as our relationship to them in real life. Clowns at once unsettle and amuse us, and perhaps it’s this tension that gets expressed in the varied and idiosyncratic ways we use 🤡 Clown Face.
Whether as an object of fear or laughter, a figure of scorn or irony, there’s no doubt that 🤡 Clown Face is a highly performative emoji in our digital lives. In sending or interpreting 🤡 Clown Face, be mindful that this emotionally charged emoji puts on stages the circus, shall we say, of meanings. 🎠
Despite another round of viral reports alleging the contrary, the OK gesture is not a racist symbol of white power—nor is its emoji form, 👌 OK Hand. Let’s clarify what the 👌 OK Hand emoji is and is not, and how it became falsely associated with white supremacy.
Meaning and Use
Called OK Hand Sign by the Unicode Standard, 👌 OK Hand was approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010.
Major vendors display the emoji as a right hand making the OK gesture, in which the thumb and index finger touch in a ring with the remaining digits held upright. While the emoji defaults as yellow, modifiers are available to alter its skin tone.
Above (left to right): How the OK Hand emoji displays on Apple, Google, and Samsung.
True to its name, 👌 OK Hand is used to convey the many sentiments of the word OK and its gesture, including acceptance, agreement, approval, assent, likability, satisfaction, and wellness, among others.
Sometimes it’s the imperfect stuff that makes things perfect 👌
In American Sign Language, counting gestures are shown on one hand, with the numbers six through nine communicated by touching a different finger on the thumb. Given this, the number nine is represented by what appears to be the 👌 OK Hand.
Above: The number nine is represented in American Sign Language by the same gesture as 👌 OK Hand . Image: Wikihow.
The 👌 OK Hand is seen as offensive in some cultures, including in parts of Europe, the Middle East, and South America, due to vulgar associations with the anus.
This gesture is occasionally paired with other emojis, such as 👉 Backhand Index Pointing Right, to suggest sexual acts (👉👌).
The White Supremacy Hoax
The myth of the OK gesture as a secret symbol of white supremacy begins in 2017 as a deliberate effort on 4chan to spread the sign as such. It was chosen in part due to its use by the controversial speaker Milo Yiannopoulos and some white nationalists in support of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. Its creators also claimed that the fingers of the OK gesture represent a W for white and the ring a P for power, as illustrated below.
Above: Internet hoaxers claim the OK gesture represents the W and P in white power. Image: Anti-Defamation League.
Online and at gatherings, some members of the alt-right adopted the OK gesture to signal their identity. Many employed it, though, simply to troll liberals who had come to believe the OK hand was a genuine hate symbol—including using 👌 OK Hand to this end on social media.
The hoax made the news in 2017 after several figures associated with white nationalism were photographed flashing an OK gesture in prominent places, such as the White House Press Room.
In 2018, Zina Bash, an attorney and supporter of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, was wrongly accused of displaying a white power gesture during his Senate confirmation hearings. Following this story, the Anti-Defamation League, which maintains a significant database of hate symbols and tracks extremist groups, clarified that the OK gesture is not a white supremacist hand sign:
It is important to realize that the “OK” gesture is a nearly universal hand gesture and most usage of it is completely innocuous…[T]he fact that white supremacists, the alt lite and many Trump supporters all use the symbol means that one cannot assume that anyone who poses with such a gesture is intending or exhibiting an association with white supremacy. Only if the gesture occurs in context with other clear indicators of white supremacy can one draw that conclusion.
Do be mindful some individuals—whether members of the alt-right, internet trolls, or others caught up in the hoax—spread the notion of the OK gesture as a white power symbol, to outrage people, or otherwise attempt to give it legitimacy.
In publishing this article, we are aware of how discussing attention-seeking efforts such as the ‘white power OK sign’ can inadvertently spread the very narrative further than its natural reach would otherwise achieve.
Attention is exactly what the individuals behind the hoax crave and so for every tweet or news report that so much as raises white power as an alternative meaning to the OK gesture, this is seen as a victory to those spreading misinformation.
On balance, it’s a tough call to make, but I feel that those looking to Emojipedia for clarification on this symbol deserve an explanation as best and most sensitively as we can provide. — Jeremy Burge, Emojipedia Editor in Chief
Other additions seen in July's preview include the popular red hair and curly hair additions, as well as the softball, kangaroo, and llama.
Above: All of the new emojis in iOS 12.1. Skin tone variations are included, but not displayed here. Images: Apple iOS 12.1 beta / Emojipedia composite.
This is the first version of iOS to support Emoji 11.0, which was released by Unicode in June 2018. Apple bills this as "over 70" new emojis; while the total tally is 158 when all gender and skin tone sequences are taken into account.[1]
Here is the full list of new emojis included in iOS 12.1:
Note that if viewing this list on a platform which doesn't support these emojis, each character may show as a symbol for a missing character, or a sequence of other characters.
These all show as the correct emoji when running iOS 12.1 or above.
Hair
One of the most prominent additions in this release are four characters which permit hair color options for red hair, curly hair, white hair, and no hair.
In Emoji 11.0 these form sequences that permit a woman or man to have these hair colors. Worth noting is that these aren't the same as the existing skin tone choices, which allow any emoji to be modified.
Above: Hair color options in iOS 12.1. Images: Apple / Emojipedia composite.
One benefit of this is that, for instance, the person with white hair or with curly hair can have any skin tone. A drawback is that no options exist for a redheaded runner, a bald bride, or a curly-haired judge.
Release
iOS 12.1 is in beta now, with a public release expected by late October or mid-November 2018.
No official release date has been set at this time, and as with any beta, designs shown here are subject to change prior to a final release.
These same new emojis will also be available on macOS, watchOS and tvOS in 2018. View details of this release from Apple or browse Emoji 11.0 for full details of this 2018 release from Unicode.
In addition to the 157 new emojis in Emoji 11.0; iOS 12.1 now supports the 🇺🇳 United Nations Flag which was added to Emoji 4.0 in 2016 but hasn't been supported on Apple platforms until now. ↩︎
Microsoft has added support for Emoji 11.0 in the latest update of Windows 10 known as the October 2018 Update. In addition to these new emojis, noteworthy modifications to earlier emoji designs are also included in this latest release.
Featuring 157 new emojis in total, users will find popular additions such as a mango, lobster, party face and redheads.
Microsoft first previewed this new set as part of the Insiders release in July 2018, and now join major vendors such as Twitter (Twemoji 11.0) and Google (Android 9.0 "Pie") in Emoji 11.0 support.[1]
Like recent updates from Samsung, Google and Twitter, this update also updates the vendor's 🔫 Pistol emoji to display a toy squirt gun / water pistol - a change which was telegraphed several months ago.
It was expected that before the end of this year all major vendors would display the 🔫 Pistol in this fashion, and with this update this expectation has been fulfilled.
A total of 55 previously released Microsoft emoji designs have today been modified, as well as a further five changes to emojis not presently Recommended for General Interchange (RGI). Many of the design tweaks were evidently made to better align Window's emoji suite with the converging design choices made by other major vendors.
Akin to Google (unlike Twemoji), Microsoft opted to provide the four new "emoji component" code points used to create these hair style emojis with stand-alone designs, as shown below.
These aren't shown on the emoji keyboard and aren't intended for separate display, but may show in circumstances such as apps that don't correctly display ZWJ Sequences.
Above: The ten new animal emojis from Emoji 11.0, including 🦘 Kangaroo and 🦞 Lobster
There are six new food and drink emojis included in this release in total.
Above: The six new foodstuff emojis from Emoji 11.0, including 🥭 Mango and 🧁 Cupcake
Emoji 11.0's other features include body parts such as 🦵 Leg and 🦶 Foot, a series of scientific objects such as 🥼 Lab Coat, some new activity-based objects like the 🛹 Skateboard (notably shown from the underside) and 🥍 Lacrosse, as well as other new objects from 🧻 Roll of Toilet Paper to 🧨 Firecracker. A selection of these new emoji is shown below.
Above: A selection of Microsoft's Emoji 11.0 designs. All of the vendor's new emoji designs can be viewed here.
Changes
Design convergence with other vendors is a clear priority for Microsoft, with many changes either correcting past mistakes, tweaking designs, or often moving a design closer to how it might be displayed on other platforms.
🚯 No Littering now correctly bans littering, rather than banning putting litter in a trash can.
🕊️ Dove now now features an olive branch in its beak, as well as changing its directionality to be left-facing.[2].
🖥️ Desktop Computer now displays as a stand-alone widescreen monitor, as is the norm across vendors.
💻 Laptop Computer now faces forward displaying its keyboard in-keeping the the standard seen across other vendors and the 🖱️ Computer Mouse has had its color scheme simplified.
The 🐍 Snake now features a coiled body and a leftward-facing head, as is the norm.
The 🥙 Stuffed Flatbread now features its ingredients emerging from the side of a round pitta as opposed to at the top end of an elongated wrap.
Emojis dispalying a bright beaming sun in isolation of terrain[3], such as 🌞 Sun With Face and 🌦️ Sun Behind Rain Cloud, have an increased number of radiant beams emitting from their circular centers.
Additionally, the four cloud emojis which emit weather events like rain and snow have been tweaked to display more of these elements or, in the case of 🌩️ Cloud With Lightning and ⛈️ Cloud With Lightning and Rain, make their lightning bolt darker and extend further down from the body of the cloud. These too better match the design choices of other major vendors.
🐙 Octopus and 🦑 Squid now feature the anatomically correct number of legs.[4]
🐞 Lady Beetle and 🦂 Scorpion are also now more anatomically accurate thanks to changes in their antenna and leg structures respectively. However, unlike 🐙 Octopus and 🦑 Squid, this anatomic accuracy is congruent with other vendors' depictions.
The remaining emojis changed in this update but not not highlighted or discussed here are as follows:
Windows features a series of non-RGIZWJ sequences based around the 🐱 Cat Face emoji. These unsanctioned ZWJ sequences all featured the character 🐱👤 Ninja Cat and exclusively display as single characters on Windows devices.
The non-RGI 🐱👤 Ninja Cat on Windows devices has had its nose and ears changed.
There are an additional five ZWJs which display 🐱👤 Ninja Cat performing various activities, four of which received design modifications in this update.
These emoji updates are coming to all Windows 10 users starting October 2, and rolling out in a staggered release.
Those using Windows Insider builds would have already received these updates at various stages over the past few months, varying based on the fast or slow ring options.
This is not reflective of other vendors design choices, where between two and six tentacles are general shown - instead, this is an instance where accurate divergence was favored over convergence. ↩︎
In this month's Emoji Wrap podcast Jason Snell joins me to discuss the new emojis coming to iOS in 2018, did Apple try and spoil Microsoft's big day, and what's got the New Yorkers upset?
Each month I send a newsletter to keep you updated with what's happening recently in the emoji scene[1] - some quirky, some news and reporting. Then we discuss it on the podcast, which you can hear below.
Jason can be found alongside Myke Hurley weekly on the Upgrade podcast on Relay FM with insights into what's new in the Apple ecosystem. You'll also find him on a bunch of pop culture podcasts on The Incomparable, and writing for Six Colors among other sites.
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Emoji design is one small area that a company can inject personality into otherwise similar-looking operating systems. I recently got my hands on a Fitbit Versa, and enjoyed taking a look at the custom headband-sporting emojis on the device.
Above: Fitbit Versa showing a selection of regular emojis, displayed with Fitbit's custom emoji font. Photo: Jeremy Burge.
To be clear, these aren't emoji-like stickers or some other custom emoticon system. Fitbit has created an emoji font which it uses to display regular Unicode emoji code points with a sportier alternative.
The way this is implemented is no different to how Samsung devices show different emoji designs to those on an iPhone running iOS.
Where Apple chooses to display the generic 📱 Mobile Phone emoji as an iPhone and Samsung displays the same emoji as a Galaxy; Fitbit chooses to display the 👽 Alien as an alien that's also interested in fitness.
Above: Robot and Pile of Poo get headbands the Fitbit emoji font.
There doesn't seem to be a way to input emojis into the Fitbit touch-screen interface, so the best way to see these emojis is in notifications from mobile apps such as iMessage, WhatsApp and Telegram.
Support extends past the smileys section, with the Robot, Pile of Poo, and even fantasy characters such as Zombies and Elves getting the headband treatment.
Above: Even the fantasy characters get a sporty makeover in Fitbit's emoji font. Support for gender sequences is lacking, as seen by the gender signs after each emoji. Photo: Jeremy Burge.
The majority of animals, food, activities, travel, objects and symbols fall back to open-source Twemoji designs when Fitbit hasn't provided a custom image.
Among the sports, the running shirt and snowboarder both have turquoise-colored garments which is used as part of Fitbit's branding.
Scope
Some technical limitations in this implementation include text-parsing issues. Most notably, when it comes to gender and skin-tone sequences: the skin tones are mostly not shown, and the gendered characters display as the base emoji first, followed by a gender symbol.
Additionally, this set is limited to Emoji 5.0 from 2017; so no support is included for 2018 additions such as 🥵 Hot Face and 🥶 Cold Face.
Release
Collectively, this emoji set does a formidable job of conveying the same concept as the emojis on other platforms, yet with a playful nod toward the device they are being displayed on.
I'd love to see this font expand to include animals with headbands in future, or for the watch emoji to match one of the Fitbit models (this currently shows the generic Twemoji watch).
Should this set be maintained and updated by the company, it's a welcome expansion of the emoji universe.
These emojis are available now on the Fitbit Versa and Fitbit Ionic.
Note: At this stage Fitbit emoji designs are not listed in the Emojipedia archive. Maybe one day?
New changes on Twitter mean that for the first time each emoji counts as the same number of characters in a tweet. Previously 💁, 💁🏽, and 💁🏽♂️ would have used 2, 4, and 9 characters respectively.
The limit of 280 characters remains intact for latin characters, and as before, each emoji uses two characters. This change announced by Twitter today means that instead of some emojis using two characters and other using up to 14 characters, all will now use a consistent two characters.
Prior to this update, here was how many characters each type of emoji used:
💁 Emoji: 2
💁🏽 Emoji + skin tone: 4
💁♂️ Emoji + gender: 7
💁🏽♂️ Emoji + gender + skin tone: 9
👨👩👧 Family with 3 people: 8
👨👩👧👦 Family with 4 people: 11
🇳🇴 Country Flag: 4
🏳️🌈 Rainbow Flag: 7
🏴 Subdivision Flag: 14
While not a deliberate effort to discourage certain emoji types, the net result of the previous character counter meant that people using emojis with skin tones would be left with fewer characters remaining to tweet than those who used the default yellow emojis.
Under Twitter's new system, all of the emoji types are equal and use two characters, no matter how many code points are used:
💁 Emoji: 2
💁🏽 Emoji + skin tone: 2
💁♂️ Emoji + gender: 2
💁🏽♂️ Emoji + gender + skin tone: 2
👨👩👧 Family with 3 people: 2
👨👩👧👦 Family with 4 people: 2
🇳🇴 Country Flag: 2
🏳️🌈 Rainbow Flag: 2
🏴 Subdivision Flag: 2
Twitter Design Lead Bryan Haggerty confirmed to Emojipedia that Twitter is using the Twemoji library to determine "what counts as an emoji", in effect meaning that any of the 2,823 emojis supported in Twemoji will get the equal-character-count treatment.
Platforms that extended the standard Unicode RGI[1] set to include additional emojis (such as Microsoft’s Ninja Cat) will not be counted under the new system, and will continue to use more than two characters.
This is a welcome update that not only removes a layer of confusion for users, it also indirectly makes the platform more equal for those who prefer to use 💁🏽 over 💁.
Apple has released a new version of its forthcoming bagel emoji. Now including cream-cheese, this aims to address concerns raised about the previous design.
When Apple first released the new emoji support in iOS 12.1 beta 2, many were quick to criticize the bagel. “What midwestern bagel factory did this bagel come out of?” asked Nikita Richardson of Grub Street.
Today Apple released beta 4 of iOS 12.1, and the bagel design has changed.
Above: Apple's new bagel emoji design is more textured and includes cream cheese. Image: Apple / Emojipedia composite.
One challenge for the bagel emoji may have been that it's tough to make any bagel look appetizing without some kind of filling. While this update may not please those who prefer bagels with different contents, it does seem closer to what people want to consume.
Jason Snell of Six Colors summarised some of the feedback about the old bagel design in the latest Emoji Wrap podcast:
As with all emojis, depictions of the bagel emoji vary by vendor. While the bagel's cousin the 🍩 Doughnut generally appears with chocolate frosting, WhatsApp shows this as a strawberry flavor instead.
Designs from major vendors until now had been split on whether to include a filling in the bagel or not. Arguably, a bagel with cream cheese is a different item to simply a “bagel”, however as each emoji generally represents an entire class of objects, that's unlikely to be an issue in practice.
Above: Designs for the bagel emoi from major vendors in October 2018. Image: Various vendors / Emojipedia composite.
At the time of writing, there are a variety of bagels on offer on various platforms: some plain and sliced, and others with cream-cheese, some also with sesame seeds on top as well.
Provided each vendor design conveys the concept of a bagel in a sufficiently clear way, the job of the emoji is done. The rest comes down to personal taste - both literally, and in a design-sense.
Twitter design lead Bryan Haggerty ran us through the process of designing the Twemoji bagel, shown above alongside other vendor designs.
“We had first started with simply one half of a sliced bagel, which at a smaller size just looked like a brown donut. We quickly moved to realizing the necessity of the cream cheese, both visually and from the perspective of some former New Yorkers on the team.”
On the decision-making behind the cream-cheese bagel found on Android, Jennifer Daniel, head of emoji design at Google, told Emojipedia via email:
“Is there anyone more opinionated about authenticity than New Yorkers and their bagels? Our bagel was drawn by someone who has eaten a bodega bagel before. 😉”
When asked about if Google tried other types of bagels before settling on the current design, Daniel joked “one of those traditional Brooklyn rainbow bagels with butter.”
Precedent
This isn't the first time an emoji design has been called out in the court of public opinion.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai possibly didn't know what he was getting into when he joked in November 2017 that Google would drop everything to fix the ingedient order of the Android burger emoji.
Above: Google has previously been criticised for placing the melted cheese under the burger patty. Image: ABC News, Cheddar, Fox News / Emojipedia composite.
Subsequently, Google's developer conference in May of 2018 opened with an “apology” for these emoji sins and a demonstration of the newly-relocated cheese.
Other notable emoji mishaps over the years have included Apple's paella emoji which was deemed to have used an inauthentic set of ingredients, not true to the traditional recipe used in Valencia.
Above: Campaigners rallied to have Apple's paella emoji use traditional ingredient.
Prior to the paella there was the case of the peach emoji which as part of a design overhaul, ended up being displayed more like a peach and less like buttocks - the most common use-case for this emoji.
More recently, Emojipedia's own sample images - a set of designs used to demonstrate how newly-approved emojis may look when released - came under scrutiny for messing up the accuracy of multiple designs.
Above: Three of Emojipedia's sample images came under scrutiny in early 2018.
Release
Those who receive beta versions of iOS will have access to all of Apple's new emojis - including this bagel - now.
The final release of iOS 12.1 is expected at some stage between late October and mid November 2018 and will come as a free software update for all iOS 12.0 devices. Apple has not confirmed a specific release date, so these dates are merely estimates.
Until the final release of iOS 12.1, all designs remain subject to change.
When it comes to emojis, there’s no time of year quite like Halloween. We fill our texts and tweets with the many tricks and treats emojis offer for the holiday, from jack-o’-lanterns 🎃 and candy 🍬 to bats 🦇 and spider webs 🕸️ to frightened faces 😱 and devilish grins 😈 to vampires 🧛 and clowns 🤡. Making many an appearance, of course, is the apparitional 👻, or Ghost emoji.
But because this 👻 Ghost is as goofy-looking as it is ghoulish, it’s beloved all year round. This emoji calls for an investigation—the not-so paranormal investigation of Emojiology.
🔤 Meaning
Widely depicted as a white-sheeted ghost making a silly face, 👻 Ghost marks content related to the scary and supernatural, especially around Halloween. Thanks to its playful look, the emoji can also convey that someone or something is fun, goofy, wild, weird, or downright crazy. Specific applications include references to Snapchat, whose logo is a ghost, and the slang term ghosting, or abruptly ending a relationship or leaving a place without explanation.
💬 Development
👻 Ghost began haunting our keyboards as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 along with a few other Halloween staples, including 💀 Skull and 🎃 Jack-O-Lantern. For all its spectral connotations, though, we ain’t afraid of no 👻 Ghost. That’s because the emoji comes across as friendly and wily, far more Casper than Poltergeist.
Above: Popular cartoon depictions of ghosts, including Casper the Friendly Ghost (left) and the Ghostbusters logo (right).
The appearance of 👻 Ghost varies across platforms, but the main vendors, including Apple, Google, and Samsung, display a white, cartoon ghost with bulging eyes, tongue stuck out, and arms outstretched.
Above: How Ghost displays across major platforms. Twitter's ghost notably lacks a tongue.
👻 Ghost's design conjures up a person dressed up in a classic, white-sheet ghost costume—a trope which, apparently, dates back to the 19th century, when ghosts were depicted in burial shrouds to set them apart from living characters in performances—delivering a waggish Boo! Samsung made this suggestion unmistakable in its original, and adorable design, which showed a yellow smiley peeking timidly from under some linen.
Above (left to right): Ghost on Samsung TouchWiz 7.1, Google Android 5.0, Microsoft Windows 10, and emojidex 1.0.34.
Come its 2018 Experience 9.0 version and Samsung’s 👻 Ghost was hewing to Apple’s design.
The same was true for Google by Android 8.0 in 2017, which transformed a more blob-like baddy into a winking wraith. Microsoft’s emoji now has a very Ghostbusters feel, though it still more closely resembles Apple’s compared to its blue predecessor. The open-source emojidex is no major player in the emoji-verse, but we should give a special nod to its design, a cobalt-blue, fiery-faced demon of a ghost.
Noting the great differences the emoji’s personality across platforms, artist @RTgrl_ hilariously tiered 👻 Ghost’s designs.
👻 Ghost has been a popular player ever since its debut. In March 2014, an Atlantic article ranked 👻 Ghost as the second best emoji of them all, because it’s both “silly and macabre.” In July 2015, a Bustle rundown of monster emojis described 👻 Ghost as “derpy” and “spoopy,” the latter a typo that spread as a slang term for something that is spooky but silly. Later that October, a GQ piece hailed 👻 Ghost as “a perfect aspect of modern communication” for the many uses of the “silly cartoon.”
Indeed, the MO of 👻 Ghost, as so many agree, isn’t to haunt but to humor.
One prominent user of 👻 Ghost is Cher, the Goddess of Pop—and of emoji, too, if her social media is any measure. On Twitter, Cher has made 👻 Ghost into her signature emoji, an idiosyncratic addition or response to just about any and all content. So much so that in 2014 BuzzFeed broke down “15 Super Useful Ways We Can Use The Ghost Emoji Like Cher,” ranging from cooing over babies to raving over outfits, as if she’s issuing a wavy-armed Whoa! Cher’s many fans have also adopted 👻 Ghost when tweeting at or about her.
The mischievous charm of 👻 Ghost isn’t lost on the company whose design helped popularize it: Apple. As part of its 2018 release of iOS 12, Apple brought 👻 Ghost into its select, just-shy-of-two-dozen fold of Animoji, or animated emoji that respond to facial expressions. Now, Apple users can say Boo! to their boo.
😜 Four new Animoji options and a brand new avatar feature called Memoji are coming to iOS 12 later this year 🐨🐯🦖👻 pic.twitter.com/cZmtdf1lu0
I miss your lil goofy self we gotta catch up soon 👻
— Jordon from JacksonState (@peepmerollin_) May 14, 2018
And since it looks like its hollering, 👻 Ghost is also commonly employed in reactions, as if someone is screaming in excitement or is so besides themselves that they've given up the ghost, so to speak.
; omg #AnimalKingdom new season is out!!! *screams my lungs out!!!!* 👻🙌🏽
Omg it is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo hooooooooootttttttttttttt 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 ☀☀☀☀🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥i need ice in my life I gone die it is so hot 👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻it omg I can't
👻 Ghost emoji lends itself to other metahporical ghosts, especially the slang ghosting, i.e., suddenly ending a relationship without explanation and any further communication.
If I ghost you it’s likely because I’ve already spoken on the issues before and you still being goofy and I’m not big on repeating myself or putting up with bs sooo 👻🤷🏽♀️ https://t.co/0ShxsNqZz5
Finally, as the logo of Snapchat features a ghost (see @Snapchat's avatar below), 👻 Ghost is often used a shorthand for a message or account on the app.
As the examples show, we certainly welcome 👻 Ghost in Halloween and horror contexts, but on its own the emoji isn’t scary.
To its strength, it’s silly, adding an expressive wisp of whimsy, bewilderment, or wackiness to our digital communication. Do be mindful that its appearance does vary considerably across platforms, but regardless of how it exactly displays, 👻 Ghost never loses its fun-loving spirit, shall we say. 👻
While iOS users are awaiting the final release of iOS 12.1 with support for Emoji 11.0 (the 2018 emoji update); work continues on the 2019 release of the Unicode Standard.
Today's Emoji 12.0 beta announcement from Unicode provides a chance for vendors and implementers to test the details of what might be coming in the next year. Not scheduled for release until March 2019, this list of candidates is one step closer to the final emoji list of 2019.
(It should go without saying that a full Unicode release includes far more than just emoji updates, but have you seen which site you're on right now?)
No new code points are included at this point in the release cycle, but some details have been expanded to show which emojis should include gender or skin tone combinations, an area which has become more complex in recent emoji releases.
Previously-announced candidates such as a white heart and flamingo remain as draft candidates in the Emoji 12.0 beta, as do accessibility-related emojis proposed by Apple in early 2018 including people in wheelchairs, a service dog, a mechanical arm and leg, and more.
Skin tone support for emojis such as the handshake and wrestlers have been added in this release, which are already supported by a number of vendors including Google and Facebook.
Above: Facebook already supports skin tones for the handshake emoji and now these are draft emoji candidates for 2019. Images: Facebook / Emojipedia composite.
Also updated in this release is the documenation for Emoji ZWJ Sequences which have been modified from earlier drafts. For instance, the candidates for people holding hands (with added skin tone support) now use a ZWJ sequence of, for example, 👩🏾 + 🤝 + 👩🏼 instead of two of the (new) standing-person characters.
These sequence changes won't affect end-users, but are necessary detail to iron out for vendors who implement emoji updates. While in this context the handshake emoji may look odd to represent “people holding hands”, it's not all that different to how 👨❤️💋👨 is composed of the sequence: 👨 + ❤ + 💋 + 👨.
Families
Included in this announcement from Unicode is a hint toward a more diverse emoji keyboard.
Version 12.0 now lists the 👪 Family emoji as a “modifier base” for skin tones. This means that skin tone support is Recommended for General Interchange (RGI) for this emoji. If implemented as-is, this would mean that at least one family unit would be supported with any of the five skin tone options.
Above: Black family emojis are partially supported in the Emoji 12.0 beta. Images: Emojipedia mockup based on Apple emoji designs.
Unicode already documents the method by which vendors can implement broader skin tone support for families beyond the minimum requirement.
Above: Some of the the thousands of family combinations supported on Windows 10 since 2016. Image: Microsoft.
It is yet to be seen if or when support for more diverse families will be included as a part of the standard RGI emoji set, but vendors are able to do this already, should they wish.
What Happens Next?
Final decisions about Emoji 12.0 will be made at the next Unicode Technical Committee meeting January, with details completed between January and March 2019.
Emoji 12.0 is scheduled for release in March 2019. As with any emoji update, this doesn't mean it will appear on phones in March, but this is the start of the window for which vendors such as Apple, Google and Samsung may begin adding support.
As with any beta, details are subject to change. We've added some new designs to our Sample Image Collection for 2019, which show an Apple-like interpretation of how these emojis might look if released in 2019. Unicode has also provided links to charts and further specifications within the announcement.
As always, keep in mind each emoji does look different across various platforms. The gap isn't as wide as it once was, but the clown and zombie in particular do have quite a range in their designs.
Above: Halloween emojis on major platforms. Images: Vendors / Emojipedia composite.
Names of the various Halloween emojis are listed below which can be useful as some may not be all that obvious at first glance (I'm looking at you, Funeral Urn).
While all devices have emoji input options these days (emoji keyboards on mobile devices, emoji picker or other UIs on desktop), another option if you can't find what you're looking for is to copy and paste from Emojipedia directly.
If you're after further Halloween emoji reading, check our Emojiology series where look at the many ways people use emojis such as the 👻 Ghost or 🤡 Clown Face.
For a more detailed emoji listing, check the Halloween Emoji List which updates over time and also includes gender variations for many of these emojis.
With the release of iOS 12.1, iPhone and iPad users have access to six new smileys, redheads, people with curly hair, a softball, skateboard, mango, bagel and kangaroo emoji for the first time.
The 2018 emoji list approved earlier this year included 157 new emojis which are all included in iOS 12.1, plus the 🇺🇳 Flag for United Nations which was previously approved but hasn't been available on iOS until now.
Note: Emojis in the list below show correctly if using iOS 12.1, or another operating system with support for Emoji 11.0. Each links to a page with cross-platform images which can be used if browsing on an older system.
Smileys are generally the most popular of a new emoji set, and iOS delivers six new emojis to the People and Smileys category of the emoji keyboard in this update.
Above: New smileys in iOS 12.1. Images: Apple / Emojipedia composite.
Early feedback is showing 🥰 Smiling Face With 3 Hearts to be a crowd-pleaser which makes sense given then high usage figures of hearts and emojis including hearts.
People
At last, redheads are here. People with curly hair, white hair, and no hair are included too. Press and hold any of these new emojis to view skin tone options.
Above: Curly haired people are included in iOS 12.1 with gender and skin tone support. Image: iOS screenshot / Emojipedia.
These new emojis are stored as ZWJ Sequences which use four new emoji component characters for hair color which were added to the Unicode Standard in June 2018.
On iOS 12.1 these new hair options work in exactly the same way as any emoji, however when sending to users on older systems or with apps that attempt custom emoji implementations the individual characters may show.
Above: Emoji ZWJ Sequences like the red hair options have various levels of support on older systems.
For each emoji component (eg 🦰 Red Hair), 12 distinct emojis are available to choose from: one default-yellow woman and man, and five skin tone options for each.
There are no new skin tone modifiers which is how most people view the existing hair colors (i.e. usually black hair pairs with the lightest skin tone, then blonde, brown, dark brown, and black again for the darkest skin tone).
If the new hair styles were implemented as an additional skin tone modifier, that would have resulted in people with the new hair types being restricted to one skin tone, i.e. vendors would have to choose which single skin tone a person with curly hair or a bald head should have. I suspect a number of redheads might be expecting to press-and-hold for a red hair variant of all existing emojis, but that is not what is provided for in Emoji 11.0.
Above: New hair options in iOS 12.1. Images: Apple / Emojipedia composite.
In the case of curly hair, the color of the hair changes with each skin tone using the same skin-tone-to-hair pairings as other emojis.
Other than the singers, the new red haired and white haired emojis are the only people on Apple's keyboard to have a non-yellow hair color as the default.
Left: The first revision of Apple's bagel emoji in iOS 12.1 beta 2. Right: The version of the bagel emoji in the final release of iOS 12.1.
Other miscellaneous emoji additions in iOS 12.1 include the 🥭 Mango, 🥬 Leafy Green (intended to represent Asian greens commonly cooked such as bok choy - but could also be seen as a lettuce), 🦘 Kangaroo, 🧿 Nazar Amulet, 🧮 Abacus and 🥼 Lab Coat.
Above: Some of the assorted new emojis in iOS 12.1. Images: Apple / Emojipedia composite.
🧾 Receipt pays homage to both Apple's Think Different campaign with the words “Misfits” “Square Pegs” and “Round Holes”; as well as July 17 which one of Apple's placeholder dates (ala “Johnny Appleseed” as a name) which was originally the iCal for Mac intro date, and now also World Emoji Day.
🦟 Mosquito shows five legs, not six, as pointed out during the beta period.
🦶 Foot shows the sole of the feet, which is a different approach to all other vendors.
🏷️ Label no longer includes a metal key ring threaded through the hole.
💮 White Flower now includes a white non-transparent background behind the Japanese phrase which translates to “Well Done” or “You did very well” in English.
🇲🇷 Flag: Mauritania now shows the current flag design with horizontal red stripes on the top and bottom of the green flag.
Dark Mode
A number of black symbols have been updated with increased contrast in this update. Presumably this is to make these emojis easier to see in the new macOS Mojave dark mode.
Twitter allows the ✳️ Eight-Spoked Asterisk emoji to be inserted into Twitter names and bios but not 🔷 Large Blue Diamond. Why? To prevent accounts from attempting to look verified when they are not.
The Twitter verified checkmark is a white checkmark/tick inside a ruffled blue circle. No emoji looks exactly like this, but that doesn't mean some aren't close.
Twitter has enough issues with spam and bot accounts in general–something they have been working to clamp down on in 2018–but the last thing it needs is for regular accounts to be mistaken as verified accounts because of an emoji.
Last week iOS 12.1 came out and immediately some people were keen to add the 🧿 Nazar Amulet to their Twitter names. Sadly for those people, this emoji has now been added to the list of emojis banned from use in Twitter names.
Above: An error message shown when adding the 🧿 Nazar Amulet emoji to a Twitter name.
Attempting to include any emoji too similar to the verified checkmark in a Twitter name or bio will result in this error message:
'Account update failed: Name can't include "emoji"'
Here are the list of emojis considered too similar to the verified checkmark to be permitted in Twitter names or bios:
These are mostly either circular, blue, or contain a checkmark. In the case of the ♾️ Infinity emoji, this currently appears in a blue circle on some platforms, including Samsung and Twitter's own Twemoji set.
The list doesn't end there. Four lock-related emojis are banned too. Twitter uses a lock icon to indicate private accounts on the platform. To avoid confusion with these, the following emojis also aren't allowed in names or bios:
Above: Safari restricts the 🔒 emoji from being displayed in webpage titles.
If you've seen Twitter accounts that do include any of the above-listed emojis (ahem) the key here is that if you add a restricted emoji prior to it making the list of verified-lookalikes, it won't be removed. You get to keep it until changing Twitter names.
The above lists are correct as of the time of writing, but as with anything online, could be updated at any time. So perhaps add that 💎 Gem Stone emoji while you still can 😉
Emoji release schedules on various platforms has now spread out so far that Windows 10 is testing draft emoji candidates for 2019 at the same time that WhatsApp is releasing the new emojis from 2018.
💬 WhatsApp (beta) has begun testing Emoji 11.0 support on Android. As with previous releases iOS uses native Apple emojis, so supports the new emojis with iOS 12.1 and above
Support is a bit patchy, but mostly intact. For example, the bald emojis don't support more than one skin tone, and there doesn't appear to be support for the ♾️ Infinity emoji in the current release. These are common types of issues to expect in a beta release.
Fellow emoji lovers! Build 18277 contains a first look at the emoji we've designed for #Windows10 in preparation for the Emoji 12.0 release - the new emoji are available for input via both the Emoji Panel & Touch Keyboard 😊
Noted by Windows Insider Community Manager Jen Gentleman, this means some of the new emojis for 2019 are already showing for a subset of Windows 10 users up to a year before they may work on other platforms.
Windows Insider builds are effectively the beta channel for Windows users who don't mind trading potential bugs for access to features not yet ready for the public builds.
As yet, the 2019 emoji list hasn't been finalized by Unicode and these code points aren't recommend for circulation, which Microsoft hints at in its release notes for this build:
The complete list of emoji for the Emoji 12 release is still in Beta, so Insiders may notice a few changes over the coming flights as the emoji are finalized. We have a bit more work to do, including adding search keywords for the new emoji, and adding a few emoji that aren’t finished yet.
The new 🦶 Foot emoji saw a disproportionate number of retweets compared to other high-engagement emojis, while the 🥰 Smiling Face With 3 Hearts saw almost no commentary, but a lot a likes and retweets which made it the third highest in this list.
Above: Top 25 emojis as per social media response. Image: Emojipedia.
Of the six new smileys in iOS 12.1, only 🥶 Cold Face and 🥳 Partying Face didn't make the top 10. It appears that the variety of interpretations (and potentially suggestive uses) of 🥴 Woozy Face, 🥺 Pleading Face and 🥵 Hot Face led these to draw higher engagement than those with more literal and narrow use cases.
Measuring new emojis by engagement (likes, comments and retweets) on Twitter isn't necessarily an indication of how popular any emoji will be in real-world use, but it does give an insight into which emojis people consider interesting, notable or controversial in some way.
Commentary on the seventh-ranked 🦵 Leg primarily seemed to focus on the “weird” nature of this addition, as opposed to a particular expression of interest in using it as an emoji.
Rounding out the top 1/3 of the list were almost exclusively food items and animals. 🥭 Mango made it in the top 10, two spots ahead of the commonly-requested🧁 Cupcake.
When @BakerMachado thinks no one wants a mango emoji
🦙 Llama was the most popular animal, and 🦟 Mosquito the least popular.
At the less-discussed end of scale are household items such as 🧺 Basket (displayed on iOS as a laundry basket) and 🧹 Broom, as well as objects such as a 🧯 Fire Extinguisher and 🧰 Toolbox. 🧷 Safety Pin may have seen more popularity if release in 2016 when it was used as a display of solidarity with marginalized groups.
I'm a little surprised to see 🧮 Abacus — possibly the least relevant emoji of the new set — is not at the very end of the list.
All responses are charted below, with 70 entries in total. Gender and skin tone variations for human emojis have been merged into a single entry per emoji group.
Above: Smileys and people were the most engaging emojis in iOS 12.1, while household objects saw the least discussion. Image: Emojipedia.
The List
All statistics in this article have been gathered from this Twitter thread, with numbers tallied from October 30 2018 to November 7 2018.
The date range used means that an emoji such as the 🥯 Bagel—which had a lot of scrutiny in during the prior weeks—doesn't necessarily show as high as it might have done had the same thread been posted during the iOS 12.1 beta period.
It's also worth noting that while other platforms did roll these emojis out earlier than Apple, iOS is the only platform with a universally fast uptake of new emoji support, and thus it's rare to see widespread use of new emojis until they are released on iOS.
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Above: Microsoft has given graphic representation to the new 
