“I’ve been waiting forever for the ginger emoji and THIS is it?? Uh, hello? Redheads feel all the emotions, too.”

Self-confessed “feisty redhead” Becca Watters on Twitter wrote about her frustration with new emoji choices available upon the release of iOS 12.1 which included redheads amongst the 158 new emoji choices.

Becca was not alone with her gripes about the scope of ginger representation on the emoji keyboard.

I’ve been waiting forever for the ginger emoji and THIS is it?? 👩🏼‍🦰

Uh, hello? Redheads feel all the emotions, too.

But hey, at least there’s a ball of 🧶 said nobody, ever. Idiots. 🤦🏼‍♀️#GingerEmoji @apple

— Becca Watters (@beccawatters) November 2, 2018

Spokane news anchor Jen York echoed the sentiment:

#Gingers finally got an emoji!  Though, still not equal.  Redheads aren’t included in every other version of the human emojis. 🤦🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️💁🏼‍♀️🙅🏼‍♀️🙎🏼‍♀️  What gives @AppleSupport?

Other comments from redheads upon the release of iOS 12.1:

• “this isn't exactly a significant improvement over no redhead emojis”
• “We waited literally years for you to give us a redhead emoji and when you finally did, you didn’t add it to the other emoticons”
• “i’m disappointed & i don’t understand the logic”
• Redhead 👩🏻‍🦰 emoji total let down. That’s it really?!?  We have one emotion?!?

What do people want? According to these tweets and more: for every emoji to include a redhead option.

Most attention is given to new emojis when Apple updates iOS but it's the Unicode Consortium which is responsible for updates to the standard used to make emojis work across all platforms. Five different ways to consider new hair types or colors were considered by Unicode in January 2017.

Options considered ranged from a new skin tone modifier, through to recommending vendors display the somewhat redundant 👱‍♀️ Woman: Blond Hair and 👱‍♂️ Man: Blond Hair emojis with a strawberry-blonde / red haired appearance.

The option chosen was one that added emoji components for red hair, curly hair, white hair, and bald people.

For redheads, the Emoji 11.0 release meant 12 emoji sequences:

• 👩‍🦰 Woman: Red Hair
• 👩🏻‍🦰 Woman: Light Skin Tone, Red Hair
• 👩🏼‍🦰 Woman: Medium-Light Skin Tone, Red Hair
• 👩🏽‍🦰 Woman: Medium Skin Tone, Red Hair
• 👩🏾‍🦰 Woman: Medium-Dark Skin Tone, Red Hair
• 👩🏿‍🦰 Woman: Dark Skin Tone, Red Hair
• 👨‍🦰 Man: Red Hair
• 👨🏻‍🦰 Man: Light Skin Tone, Red Hair
• 👨🏼‍🦰 Man: Medium-Light Skin Tone, Red Hair
• 👨🏽‍🦰 Man: Medium Skin Tone, Red Hair
• 👨🏾‍🦰 Man: Medium-Dark Skin Tone, Red Hair
• 👨🏿‍🦰 Man: Dark Skin Tone, Red Hair

Here's how these redhead options look on the iOS emoji keyboard as of October 2018:

So why not add red hair as an option alongside every emoji? A good question.

Assuming all the new hair types added in 2018 were treated as equals (red hair, curly hair, white hair, and no hair), this would require assigning a single skin tone to each, or omitting skin tones altogether.

Here's how the new hair types might look alongside existing options if skin tones were not used:

A bit odd, you might think - having new hair types buried under the default yellow skin tone at the end of the list. Not to mention the choices stretching wider than the latest iPhone XS screen.

If each new hair type were assigned a single skin tone, it doesn't get less odd. What color would you say people with bald heads should be, or those with white hair?

What's actually then being requested, if it's not any of the options above, is for every emoji to support tens of new options.

Something like this:

And you know what? That looks pretty cool. I bet people would love this.

The good news for those looking for increased hairmoji flexibility is that the above mockup showing 26 variations of 💁‍♀️ Woman Tipping Hand (52 if including a the 💁‍♂️ Man Tipping Hand, or 78 if including a gender inclusive option as well) are technically possible in future due to the way new hair colors have been implemented in the Unicode standard.

In the end it all comes down to priorities.

Each emoji takes up space on the emoji keyboard, uses memory on a device, and has the potential to bump other requests for representation such as diverse families, people with disabilities, gender inclusive options and more.

Why do we have black redheads, but still no families or couples that are anything other than blonde and white? 💑👨‍👩‍👧‍👦👩‍👩‍👦👨‍👨‍👧‍👧👩‍👦👨‍👧👫👭👬💏

— Samantha Loo (@IgnoranceAbyss) October 3, 2018

Every emoji list is a list of compromises. The question is where the priorities are, and where they should be.

For more on this, I looked at how competing demands from users, Unicode and vendors result in complex decision-making in this recent article for Medium's November issue: The New New.

We crave the new. We fear the new. But most of all, we need the new. There’s even a word for it: neophilia. With social and technological change creating competing visions of the future — many inspiring, many mind-blowing, some ominous, some downright frightening — it’s time to take a step back. From technology to culture, to sex, health, and business, Medium will predict what comes next in our latest issue, The New New.

Apple's emoji font — Apple Color Emoji — is iconic. It wasn't the first emoji set in existance, but it is certainly the most recognizable.

First debuting as part of iPhone OS 2.2 on November 21, 2008, this font is now ten years old. The original set of 471 characters have seen outsized influence over the design of emojis on many platforms in the years to come.

Apple Color Emoji

The font on iOS (nee iPhone OS) that includes all the emoji characters is called Apple Color Emoji and it has been around in various forms since 2008.

Originally containing 471 emojis for the Japanese market only, many of these original designs still largely resemble their modern counterparts.

Above: High resolution renders of original emoji designs. Image: Apple / Angela Guzman.

One of the goals of Apple's first emoji designs was to be compatible with the SoftBank emoji set from Japan. While each Apple emoji was created from scratch, there was an incentive to ensure these conveyed the same sentiment as the set already in use on other SoftBank phones.

Above: Evolution of emoji designs across multiple platforms 2008–2018. Image: Vendors / Emojipedia composite.

What's been clear in the years following the release of this set is that the convergence in emoji designs between platforms primarily skews toward the design choices made at Apple. Many are from this first emoji set.

The Designers

Just three designers created the original emoji set from Apple:

• Raymond Sepulveda
• Angela Guzman
• Ollie Wagner

Raymond and Angela created the majority of the original Apple emoji designs and Ollie contributed to the completion of nearly two dozen emojis within this set.^[1]

It was once common for an about box with credits to show who worked on a particular software application, but that is no longer the case.

Many other designers will have worked on various emoji designs in the Apple Color Emoji font over the decade since this first release. Some will have worked on many designs, others on just a few.

For the first emoji set, it's much simpler to note the designers involved.

Above: Apple's original emoji set from 2008. Photo: Jeremy Burge.

All of Apple's emojis in use on iOS in 2018 have been recreated (sometimes multiple times) over the years, though the spirit of the original designs lives on.

What are Raymond, Angela, and Ollie up to now? Raymond still works on the UI design team at Apple, Angela is now working as a designer at Google, and Ollie is Creative Director / Partner at Yap Studios.

Earlier this year, I spoke to Angela Guzman on the Emoji Wrap podcast about what it was like being around when Steve Jobs gave the go-ahead on that first emoji set.

On November 21, 2008 Apple released a free software update for iPhone users in Japan which contained Apple's first emoji font and keyboard.

Ten years later, it's clear that this release paved the way for the widespread emoji support we see around the world today.

Background

When entering the Japanese market in 2008, one key area of focus for Apple was including emoji support on the newly released iPhone 3G.

This emoji support came in the form of a software update known as iPhone OS 2.2 (iPhone OS is what is now known as iOS) that was released globally, although the emoji keyboard was restricted to the Japanese market only.^[1]

Above: Emoji designs on iPhone OS 2.2 in 2008.

Apps soon began including Easter Eggs which unlocked the emoji keyboard for users outside of Japan. This was not supported or endorsed by Apple but nonetheless emoji use outside of Japan initially spread via these workarounds.

At the time emoji support was first implemented, this was done in a way that was compatible with SoftBank (Apple's iPhone release partner in Japan), but emoji support had yet to come to Unicode which would make the characters universally interchangable between devices, carriers and software platforms for the first time.

Timeline

• 🎌 2008: iPhone OS 2.2 is released on November 21 with an emoji keyboard and emoji font for the first time. Restricted to Japan, but could be unlocked via third party apps.
• 💻 2010: Mac OS X Lion is released on June 20 with emoji support for the first time (using the same emojis as iOS 4.0).
• 📲 2011: In iOS 5.0 the emoji keyboard could be activated by anyone around the world with a quick trip to the settings app - no workarounds needed.
• 🌐 2012: With the release of iOS 6.0 in September 2012, 376 new emojis were shown on the emoji keyboard for the first time.^[1:1] 2012 was also the year Apple switched to using Unicode-compatible code points for emoji.^[2]
• 🎉 2015: iOS 8.3 is released with new emojis for the first time in three years. Additions included switching the default skin tone from white to yellow, skin tone options added and families with single sex parents.

In 2015 the emoji keyboard was enabled for all iOS users by default. And in doing so created the momentum for the emoji keyboard became the world's most popular keyboard.

Global Reach

Emoji was added to the Unicode Standard in October 2010, which was a key step in ensuring that emoji characters could be cross-platform compatible around the world. Prior to this, carriers in Japan each had competing emoji implementations which were only partially compatible with one another.

Apple's 2008 emoji implementation was based on the set used by Japanese carrier Softbank, and the influence on many of these designs is clear.

Even moreso—much the the chagrin of some—Apple's emoji font has gone on to dominate public expectation of what an emoji should look like.

Above: Apple's emoji keyboard in 2008 (left) and 2018 (right). Photos: Jeremy Burge.^[3]

While Apple does not dictate which emojis are approved by Unicode,^[4] it is reasonable to wonder that without Apple's strong color emoji support in these earlier years, whether we would see it as the cultural phenomenon it has become today.^[5]

A Continual Work In Progress

Over the years, many changes have been made to Apple's emoji set. The total number of emojis has increased from 471 in 2008 to 2,776 in 2018 - many as a result of gender and skin tone support.

Some changes have been purely aesthetic (Apple switched to 3D rendered designs in 2016) while others reflected the formal names of emojis when they were added to the Unicode Standard.^[6]

Above: Emoji evolution on iOS 2008–2018. Image: Apple / Emojipedia composite.

Vice President of User Interface Design Alan Dye oversees Apple's emoji designs and I asked him about these design updates earlier in the year.

Regarding the major emoji redesign of 2016, Dye explained than in part Apple's latest redesigns were due to the addition of high resolution retina displays across the Apple lineup:

“We’ve increased the resolution of our displays quite dramatically over the years and we had to do something if we wanted to improve on it. In a very practical sense, if we wanted to display our emojis at a larger scale, we really had to rerender them.”

Given that Apple's first emoji font contained 32x32 pixel bitmapped images, even if the source files were larger and more detailed, there's no doubt a point would have came where recreating them would have been considered the best choice.

Asked about whether Apple's Animoji and Memoji features were factors in updating the emoji set to highly detailed 3D designs, Dye hinted that his team “had a sense it was coming” though clarified that “at the same time we wanted to add an additional capability even just as a static emoji to allow for more expressive variation.”

Changes

😲 Astonished Face previously displayed Xs for eyes.

👼 Baby Angel was previously white and had a blue halo.

🏦 Bank previously displayed the letters BK.^[7]

🛀 Person Taking Bath previously showed a person without any facial features. This emoji now supports skin tones.

🚏 Bus Stop previously showed style of bus stop found in Japan, and now shows a bus stop sign similar to those found in Cupertino.

💃 Woman Dancing gained eyes, a mouth, nose, and hands.

⛪ Church no longer uses a default Photoshop texture for the stained glass.

🍳 Cooking was previously shown as a cracked egg, later changed to an egg in a frying pan.

🍆 Eggplant (aka Aubergine) has retained its familiar shape over the years, but did lose the shadow.

👷 Construction Worker no longer displays the green plus / cross on the helmet (used in Japan as a safety reminder in construction zones).

🐫 Two-Hump Camel (aka Bactrian Camel) has a more detailed appearance in 2018.

🏰 Castle removed the "picture frame" look that accompanied many early iOS emojis.

💻 Laptop Computer, known by its Unicode character name "Personal Computer" initially, has seen frequent updates to match new Apple hardware. A current iMac is now available via the separate 🖥️ Desktop Computer emoji.

🏪 Convenience Store still shows a prominent 24 but with a newly 3D rendered design.

🍂 Fallen Leaf added a third leaf in 2016.

📠 Fax Machine has been updated to a newer model with a larger screen.

🙏 Folded Hands once had a glow behind the hands, but now it does not.

⛲ Fountain retains three tiers, but no longer shows the background scene behind the emoji.

⛳ Flag in Hole is used for the representation of golf. Previously showing a golf ball, this now matches the Unicode name for the character.

🎓 Graduation Cap started out as a black shirt with gold buttons.

😁 Beaming Face With Smiling Eyes (original name: Grinning Face With Smiling Eyes) was previously inconsistent with other platforms which always displayed this a happy grin. Changed to be more cross-platform compatible in 2016, many miss the previous version which was like the 😬 Grimacing Face with smiling eyes. Perhaps it could come back in future as a new emoji.

👲 Man With Chinese Cap (original name: Man With Gua Pi Mao) existed in original Japanese emoji sets as a character to represent a "sterotypical Chinese person". Over time this design was updated to make the Gua Pi Mao (traditional Chinese cap) the distinguishing feature of this emoji.

🔨 Hammer started as a mallet or gavel on early platforms. This standardized with the name "hammer" in the Unicode Standard, and designs were updated to match.

👫 Man and Woman Holding Hands were previously shown as white, and due to the small size of the emoji, did not show a mouth or nose.

💁 Person Tipping Hand (original name: Information Desk Person) may be one of the more iconic designs from the original Apple emoji set. Often used for "sassiness", her spirit lives on in the version available today.

🗽 Statue of Liberty arguably missed the most prominent feature in 2008 (the torch) which is clear in 2018.

🚇 Metro was previously grouped with symbols, later given a realistic appearance and placed alongside other transport options. This now shows the characters IL2 which could be a reference to one of the more locked-down buildings at Apple's Infinite Loop Headquarters (IL2 = Infinite Loop 2).

📱 Mobile Phone now appears as an iPhone X-series model. For a few years, a white-faced iPhone 5-series was shown.

🔫 Pistol saw a controversial change from Apple in 2016, when they were the only vendor switching from a realistic firearm to a toy water pistol design. All other vendors made a similar change in 2018.

🚀 Rocket is reminiscent of the original design despite a considerable redesign.

🏃 Person Running (original name: Runner) was like many early designs that often chose a (white) man to represent active roles such as sports or professions. Future Unicode updates provided mechanisms to support skin tone and gender variations. The base character remains showing a man for backward-compatibility, though the skin tone switched to yellow by default.

🎒 Backpack (original name: School Satchel) originally showed a style of bag used in Japanese schools.

🐚 Spiral Shell was updated to its current design after Unicode standardized on the current name.

♠️ Spade Suit once showed a card around the suit character (as per the SoftBank design) which was later removed.

🌄 Sunrise Over Mountains has changed appearance over the years but retains the essence of the original design.

😂 Face With Tears of Joy, like most of the original smileys in Apple's emoji set, has stayed almost identical over the years.

📳 Vibration Mode previously showed as a phone with a heart, but now shows lines for vibration.^[8]

🎫 Ticket has changed from blue to yellow, and at one stage listed the tour as being for Johnny Appleseed.

🎐 Wind Chime appears with more detail in today's version than has been shown before.

 Shibuya no longer works on any current iPhone. This emoji existed in Japan prior to Unicode standardized of the emoji set, and was excluded from the Unicode Standard due to being a representation of a specific department store brand.

Apple and Emoji Today

From humble beginnings, emoji support on iOS has gone from a compatibility feature for one country in 2008 to a key part of Apple's messaging and iOS brand in 2018.

Tim Cook tweets about World Emoji Day, WWDC 2018 included a lengthy segment about the highly customizable Memoji feature, and Apple uses emoji for promotion in TV ads, on T Shirts, and as part of Apple Store decor.

Earlier this year Apple proposed new accessibility emojis to represent people with canes, wheelchairs, hearing aides and more.

Not only do emoji updates appear to provide users with better ways to communicate, they also inadvertantly drive iOS updates. The social effect of receiving a missing character box instead of a new emoji is a strong incentive for users to update to new iOS versions.

Regarding the future scalability of emoji when it comes to areas such as diverse families, Dye told Emojipedia “I’ll just say it’s something we’re working on, we just need a UI that can accommodate that”.

Provided the emoji keyboard continues to adapt to future diversity challenges, it seems clear that emoji on iOS is a win-win for both Apple and Apple users.

Resources

Emojipedia includes emoji archives dating back over a decade. Click or tap any emoji image to view historical entries.

📜 Delve into our emoji archive you never know the treasures you might find 👼 https://t.co/pmo9t32y8O pic.twitter.com/agy5058d5d

— Emojipedia 🦃 (@Emojipedia) April 6, 2018

Related: find out who designed the original Apple Emoji set.

Browse each version of Apple's emoji collection over the years:

• Apple iOS 12.1
• Apple iOS 11.3
• Apple iOS 11.2
• Apple iOS 11.1
• Apple iOS 10.3
• Apple iOS 10.2
• Apple iOS 10.0
• Apple iOS 9.3
• Apple iOS 9.1
• Apple iOS 9.0
• Apple iOS 8.3
• Apple iOS 6.0
• Apple iOS 5.1
• Apple iOS 5.0
• Apple iOS 4.0
• Apple iPhone OS 2.2

As many of us around the world move into the colder months of the year, we bundle up our emojis with scarves 🧣, coats 🧥, and gloves 🧤, prepared for the freezing snow ❄️ and icy winds 🌬️. We also gather around a toasty fire, or 🔥 Fire, an emoji that burns bright and keeps us digitally cozy during autumn and winter.

🔥 Fire, yes, represents that luminous, smoky combustion we call fire, which gives us light and heat and cooks our food—and, more seriously, wreaks such tragic loss and destruction, as we’ve seen this month in California. But for all the literal fires we mark with it, we more often spark up 🔥 Fire for our many metaphors of it, from the expression on fire to the slang term lit. So, on this Emojiology, let's learn how to build a 🔥 Fire emoji.

🔤 Meaning

Depicting a reddish-yellow flame, 🔥 Fire is used to convey, beyond literal fires, a range of figurative expressions connected to fire. This includes senses of "excellent" (lit), "attractive" (hot), "scathing or searing" (sick burn), or "performing exceptionally well" (on fire), among other senses.

Drawing on the phrase on fire, Snapchat displays 🔥 Fire next to two users who are on a snapstreak, or have been messaging for more than three consecutive days.

💬 Development

🔥 Fire was first added to the Unicode Standard in 2010 but had ignited emoji keyboards in Japan much earlier than this. Its appearance across platforms is fairly uniform, displayed as a flame with reddish-orange edges and whitish-yellow core, as flickering on a candlewick or burning in a campfire or fireplace.

Its appearance over time has also mostly been uniform, too. For iOS 10.2, Apple updated its 🔥 Fire to look more realistic than its slightly cartoonish predecessor. Microsoft, for its Windows 10 Anniversary Update, gave its previously flat yellow 🔥 Fire some reddish-orange depth, more in line with Apple’s look.

‌As early as June 2011, 🔥 Fire did find some use in more literal senses of heat (temperatures) and burning (cigarettes), but it was quickly applied to figurative fires, from sex appeal to the NBA’s Miami Heat:

By 2012, users joined 🔥 Fire to one of the leading slang terms of the 2010s, lit, or something "excellent" or "extremely exciting," as if it's on fire.

Lit spread from black slang into the mainstream by 2015, when the massively popular social app Snapchat helped further spread 🔥 Fire. That year, Snapchat introduced a host of emojis to characterize the status of users' relationships on the platform. It began displaying 🔥 Fire next to the names of users who were on a snapstreak (or simply streaks). That's when two users have both messaged each other back and forth within 24 hours for more than three consecutive days.

On Snapchat, the number next to 🔥 Fire (e.g., 273 🔥) indicates how many days the two have been on the streak, and if it is about to run out, ⌛ Hourglass Done will appear to encourage the pair to keep the run alive. And folks have, with streaks reaching into 1000s of days.

In 2016, 🔥 Fire was yet further fanned thanks to the expression dumpster fire, or "an exceedingly diastrous or chaotic situation," as defined by the American Dialect Society (ADS).

In January 2017, the ADS chose dumpster fire as its 2016 Word of the Year due to its prominent use during the US presidential election that year. The ADS also noted dumpster fire found creative visual representation in 🗑️🔥, joining 🗑️ Wastebasket with 🔥 Fire.

✅ Examples

🔥 Fire can make us all warm and cozy, as if creating some hygge around the hearth.

🔥 Fire can turn us on, as if we are drooling 🤤 over a hottie.

🔥 Fire can spice up 🌶️ our food and scorch our mouths.

Feeling like your look is on point? 🔥 Fire.

Or that a comeback was a sick burn? 🔥 Fire.

Above all, 🔥 Fire emoji is lit (“awesome”), conveying that someone or something is “excellent,” “desirable,” “wonderful," or "spectacular" in some way, from puppies to performances.

In its applications to the slang lit, 🔥 Fire is often paired with 💯 Hundred Points, which doubles up the sentiments of greatness and satisfaction.

🗒️ Usage

As the examples show, we purpose 🔥 Fire for our many fiery feelings and figures of speech more so than pointing to factual flames. This is, in great part, because we understand that emojis are meant to be fun and expressive, making them often feel inappropriate if we apply them to more serious circumstances, such as California's wildfires.

🔥 Fire is often amplified by other fire-related emojis, including the Unicode 11.0 newcomer 🧯 Fire Extinguisher, as well as earlier additions  🚒 Fire Engine, and 👨‍🚒 Man and 👩‍🚒 Woman Firefighter. Their sense can be literal, concerning firefighting and fire safety...

...but, again, their sense is more often figurative, conveying that something is so metaphorically hot or lit that its fire has to be put out.

The above tweet also shows that other explosive emoji help turn up 🔥 Fire's metaphorical heat, including 💥 Collision (e.g., banging or popping), 💣 Bomb (the bomb or bombshell), and, another recent addition, 🧨 Firecracker (dynamite).

And when joined with 🎇 Sparkler and 🎆 Fireworks, 🔥 Fire typically communicates celebrations and congratulations.

Real fire, of course, is useful, powerful, and deadly serious. But when it comes to its emoji representation, we, well, like to play with 🔥 Fire. That's pretty 🔥.

• 🔥 Fire Emoji on Emojipedia
• 👻 Emojiology: Ghost
• 🤡 Emojiology: Clown Face
• 🤠 Emojiology: Cowboy Hat Face

Facebook has confirmed its major emoji update for 2018 is now available for the majority of Facebook users. The release, of which some elements began to be surface in June, features 157 new emojis as well as a glossy design overhaul.

With the rollout now in its final weeks, here's what's new and changed.

Above: New smileys available as part of Facebook's latest emoji update.

As we noted earlier this year, this update marks the second major redesign of Facebook's core emoji set in just under two years. The last major redesign was completed in February of 2017, with a similarly prolonged preview / roll-out period.

All six new smiley emojis from Emoji 11.0 are present: 🥰 Smiling Face With 3 Hearts, 🥴 Woozy Face, 🥵 Hot Face, 🥶 Cold Face, 🥺 Pleading Face and 🥳 Partying Face.

Shown below is a selection of emojis which have seen significant changes in this release. These designs are now glossy with stronger gradients, and an almost 3D-like design. This is a change in aesthetic from earlier designs, and one that echoes that trends seen in the Apple and WhatsApp^[1] design sets in recent years.

Many emojis have also been given additional details compared to the relatively simple designs in place before.

Above: A comparison of select emoji designs between the Facebook 2.2.1 emoji update and the Facebook 3.0 emoji update.

This redesign is also the first to occur following the announced discontinuation of Facebook Messenger's unique emoji design set in October 2017.

Above: The journey of 💩 Pile of Poo on Android devices across Facebook and Facebook Messenger over the last number of years.

🆕 New

Every new emoji from Emoji 11.0 is supported in this update, with these including bald people, redheads, a receipt, mango, and more.

Above: A selection of new Emoji 11.0 emoji premiering on Facebook with this update.

Four new hair style emojis for men and women, including the long-requested 👨‍🦰 Red Haired Man and 👩‍🦰 Red Haired Woman are part of this release.

Note that these hair styles appear as their own individual emoji designs based on 👨 Man and 👩 Woman^[2]. There are not (presently) other RGI hair colour sequences for any other person emoji, which is consistent with the Emoji 11.0 standard released earlier this year.

Above: Facebook's designs for the four new hair style emoji. Each support the five Fitzpatrick Scale skin tone modifiers.

In the food and drink category, six new emojis have been added, including one of the more controversial newcomers, the 🥯 Bagel. Facebook's designers may have heeded the outcry of Apple users, depicting a fresh-looking bagel with a cream cheese filling in this release.

Above: New entries in the food and drink category in the Facebook 3.0 emoji update.

Facebook 3.0 features the ten new animal emojis from Emoji 11.0, including 🦘 Kangaroo and 🦚 Peacock. 🦡 Badger and 🦛 Hippopotamus display the full creature and not just the head: now the prevalent design choice, despite Google choosing to display just the animals' heads.

Above: Ten new animal emojis now available on Facebook.

🦸 Superhero and 🦹 Supervillain are also new to Facebook in this update.

When a gender is not specified, 🦸 Superhero and 🦹 Supervillain both appear as 🦸‍♂️ Man Superhero and 🦹‍♂️ Man Supervillain respectively - something that varies by platform.^[3] All support skin tone modifiers.

Above: Woman and Man variants of 🦸 Superhero and 🦹 Supervillain.

Additional new Emoji 11.0 emojis include multiple new objects relating to science, sport and household items. All new emojis added to Facebook 3.0 can be viewed here.

🆙 Changed

This update features a comprehensive redesign of the entire Facebook emoji set: almost all emojis have experienced at least some form of modification.

There are several instances where designs have been changed to more closely match the designs of other vendors. A handful of lesser-used emojis feature new designs which deviate from the emergent norms.

In an email to Emojipedia about the redesign, a Facebook spokesperson noted that the push behind the new set was to fit in with the variety of platforms Facebook now displays emoji:

“We realized the need to push on the form, color and vibrancy to feel more at home in a variety of surfaces such as camera, Stories, video, etc. The end result are emoji that are not only more expressive and fun, but have greater depth and dimensionality.”

🤣 Rolling on the Floor Laughing now shows two tears of laughter.

🤥 Lying Face now has its nose made of wood, further echoing the wooden puppet Pinocchio.

🤮 Face Vomiting now has an intense glare instead of closed eyes.

😈 Smiling Face With Horns and 👿 Angry Face With Horns now appear purple, as is the case across other major vendors.

👸 Princess now wears earrings and has more detail in the tiara, dress and overall shading.

Almost all of the people and the profession emoji have had their facial features and other details augmented. See 🤷‍♂️ Man Shrugging, 🤰 Pregnant Woman, 👮‍♀️ Woman Police Officer and 🤾‍♂️ Man Playing Handball as examples below.

👯 People With Bunny Ears now shows two people instead of a single person wearing bunny ears. This is in-keeping with other how other vendors display this emoji.^[4]

🤹 Person Juggling now shows a person juggling instead of juggling hands.

💀 Skull has been given a jaw.

🧛 Vampire now bares teeth and has a default-yellow skin tone instead of gray.

Both head and body versions of 🐈 Cat and 🐕 Dog have been re-designed.

🦔 Hedgehog is now standing on all-fours as opposed to lying on its back.

🦕 Sauropod and 🦖 T-Rex are now displayed as full-bodied creatures.

🥪 Sandwich now includes ham and has been cut in half.

🥗 Green Salad is now a vegan green salad as the egg has been removed.^[5]

🚀 Rocket is now more detailed and no longer includes an alien creature inside.

🎦 Cinema now shows as a film projector symbol as opposed to an actual theatre screen, as per other major vendors.

📑 Bookmark Tabs now displays text, specifically that of a Non-Disclosure Agreement.

🚱 Non-Potable Water, in what appears to be a mix-up, has had its tap and glass replaced with a ban on placing litter in the trash.^[6]

Flags have had their style changed and now feature a more realistic glossy waving flag instead of the flat style used previously.

Shown below are 🏳️‍🌈 Rainbow Flag, 🇺🇸 Flag of the United States and 🇮🇪 Flag for Ireland as examples.

🧚 Fairy kept the same outline as the previous release, but with great detail and shading added.

This type of change (same outline, new details) has been a common theme for a number of emojis in this redesign.

⏸ Unchanged

Just about every emoji has been redesigned in this release but there is an exception when it comes to the 👪 Family variations.

While the default ("non-human" yellow skin) versions of these family emojis have been updated with new detailed designs, the versions which permit skin tones did not see the same overhaul. See 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Family of Man, Woman, Girl, Boy as an example below.

Facebook is one of the few vendors to support skin tones for emojis that include multiple people, and the use of the Fitzpatrick scale skin tone sequences with family emojis have not been given RGI status by the Unicode Consortium, the organisation which selects and creates new emoji.

As such, these more diverse family emojis aren't often found in common use, and likely won't be until or unless more platforms also adopt these sequences.^[7] When these emojis are viewed on platforms which don't support the sequences, the composite people within the emoji sequence display instead.

⏏️ Removed

A number of non-standard emoji additions were removed in this release. Similarly to the families, emojis with two or more people aren't given RGI sequences for skin tone support in Emoji 11.0. As such, the following emojis no longer support skin tones in Facebook 3.0:

• 👯 People With Bunny Ears
• 👯‍♀️ Women With Bunny Ears
• 👯‍♂️ Men With Bunny Ears
• 👭 Two Women Holding Hands
• 👫 Man and Woman Holding Hands
• 👬 Two Men Holding Hands
• 🤝 Handshake
• 🤼 People Wrestling
• 🤼‍♂️ Men Wrestling
• 🤼‍♀️ Women Wrestling

These emojis are drafted to include some level of skin tone support in 2019. Given this, it's possible they may return in a future update.

📶 Release

This update has been rolling out to users in various testing phases since June 2018. Facebook has confirmed that rollout has been ongoing, and now all users should have this update, or receive it in the coming weeks.

On iOS, Facebook chooses to use native (Apple) emoji support, so iOS users will not have experienced any further change since updating to iOS 12.1 in October.

• Browse every Facebook Emoji
• Facebook 3.0 Update New Emojis
• Facebook 3.0 Update Changed Emojis

Questions about Samsung emoji support are a frequent occurrence on Emojipedia's various social media accounts. In particular, users often want to know why they don't have emojis that other platforms include.

Samsung has come a long way to making various emoji designs closer to other platforms in the past few years, but some oddities remain when it comes to exactly which emojis are on offer. For example, a number of emojis were removed from new Samsung devices in 2016, and Samsung confirms these will be back in a software update next year.

These three emojis were last seen on the Samsung emoji keyboard in August 2016:

Above: Three emojis removed from Samsung devices in a 2016 software update.

The release of Samsung TouchWiz 7.0 (aka TouchWiz Grace UX 7.0 as it was known at the time) included a bunch of new emoji flags, but removed a number of emojis that had been on Samsung devices since at least 2013. These emojis were taken off the emoji keyboard and no longer included in the Samsung emoji font.

Some removals made sense. There have been a number of non-standard emojis included on Samsung phones which overlap significantly with standard / RGI^[1] emoji options which really weren't necessary. The purpose of other removals wasn't as clear.

Above: Emojis removed from Samsung devices in 2016. One has since returned (🎌 Crossed Flags).

Some non-standard emojis remain supported (as in, they will display if sent from another device) yet hidden from the emoji keyboard so they are less likely to be used.

Samsung users: you might not have realized this, but a number of emojis on your keyboard didn't work anywhere else for years.

Most notably, a Unicode character known as 🖒 Reversed Thumbs Up Sign (which pre-dated Unicode emoji support) appeared on Samsung devices like any other emoji but was never supported as an emoji on other platforms.

Samsung users unwittingly trying to convey a simple thumbs up emoji ended up with a 50:50 chance of sending their friends what's known as tofu - a missing character box - in place of the standard 👍 Thumbs Up Sign.

This can happen because while Unicode sets guidelines for which characters should be implemented with emoji presentation, but these aren't mandatory. Any vendor (such as Samsung) can choose to give any Unicode character an emoji appearance and include it on the emoji keyboard. There's just no guarantee it will display as intended on a recipient phone.

Above: A number of emojis on Samsung Galaxy devices—such as all of these dice—aren't part of the recommended emoji set, and won't display on other devices. Photo: Jeremy Burge / Emojipedia.

We recently analyzed Botmoji search data and found that 🖒 Reversed Thumbs Up Sign is the most queried non-standard emoji sent to our Twitter bot which explains what an emoji is; implying that many people have been sent this character from Samsung devices but were unable to determine what it was.

Lookups of this character are now dropping since its removal from the emoji keyboard in 2017.

What's Next

I asked Samsung about the missing ✝️ Latin Cross, ☪️ Star and Crescent and ‼️ Double Exclamation Mark emojis, which remain missing on all current Samsung Galaxy series phones, and whether their removal was a bug or a deliberate choice.

The short answer is that these were removed due to incompatibilities with earlier emoji fonts on Samsung devices, and not an editorial decision relating to the content of these characters.

Regarding the ‼️ Double Exclamation Mark specifically, a Samsung representative clarified that this was originally implemented using a non-standard code point:

“We had issues where this emoji had a unique unicode [code point] of its own which overlapped with our device code for another, which didn't allow us to provide this particular emoji.”

For the ✝️ Latin Cross and ☪️ Star and Crescent another issue arose, where the color emoji implementation of these characters caused the plain text versions of these symbols (✝ and ☪︎) to appear as emojis. The workaround was to simply remove the emojis until fixed. Again, Samsung:

“We had a period where these symbols would clash with our emoji codes for these symbols, and the output would appear as emojis instead of keyboard symbols.”

The good news is that these are returning in next year's Samsung Experience 10.0 release.^[2]

Above: These three emojis are returning to Samsung devices in a 2019 software update.

Not clear at this stage is whether any of the other non-standard emojis will remain in next year's released or if these will be removed along the same lines as the 2016 set update.^[3]

Of the non-RGI emojis in Samsung Experience 9.5 (the latest public release), many appear to be misinterpretations of Unicode characters that pre-date emoji.

For example "Black Snowman" was intended as a solid snowman in a pre-emoji world but Samsung is the only vendor currently shipping ⛇ Black Snowman in their color emoji font.

Above: Regular Unicode characters included as emojis on Samsung devices.

Rollout of Samsung Experience 10.0 (publicly being branded now as Samsung One UI) is expected to begin in 2019, and it is in beta now.

New emojis added in Samsung Experience 9.5 may also be added to the emoji keyboard in this upcoming release. At the time of writing, new emojis are supported on Samsung's latest software update, but a third party emoji keyboard such as Gboard (or copy and paste from the web) is required to input these.

As always, there's more than initially meets the eye when it comes to emoji compatibility.

More

• Samsung's Emoji Adventures
• Samsung Emoji List
• Samsung Experience 9.5 Emoji Changelog
• Samsung Experience 9.1 Emoji Changelog
• Samsung Experience 9.0 Emoji Changelog

As with most things Unicode-related, emoji flags are more complicated than they may first appear.

With calls in recent years for emoji representation of the Aboriginal Australian flag, Transgender flag, Brittany flag, Kurdish flag (and many more) it's worth taking a closer look at the ways that flags can be added to the Unicode Standard, and how that impacts the set of flags available today.

After all, Apple's iPhone only included 10 country flag emojis in 2008, and now there are 268. How were these 268 determined to be more eligible than any other flags?

Above: Only 10 country flags were on iPhone in 2008. Photo: Jeremy Burge / Emojipedia.

For each flag shown on an average emoji keyboard, there are at least four different ways it might be encoded behind the scenes.

While the code used to display a flag might seem like the least interesting part of a flag emoji, understanding these details is essential in determining why these 268 flags specifically exist, and help frame the feasibility of new flags in future.

Let's use these as a starting point:

• 🏁 Chequered Flag
• 🏳️‍🌈 Rainbow Flag
• 🇺🇸 Flag for United States
• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Flag for Scotland (GB-SCT)

🏁 Chequered Flag

Chequered Flag is the easiest of the flags. It happens to look like a flag, but isn't encoded any differently to a 📻 Radio or 🎺 Trumpet.

• Number of code points: 1
• Similar flags: 🚩 🎌 🏳️

Flag like this (and 🚩) were generally added to Unicode for compatibility with the Japanese carrier emoji sets, or other pre-emoji fonts such as Webdings.

These generally aren't associated with any specific country, region or group of people—although the 🎌 Crossed Flags emoji displays as Japanese flags on all major platforms (previously a South Korean flag on Samsung).

🏳️‍🌈 Rainbow Flag

Rainbow flag is a ZWJ Sequence of these two emojis:

• 🏳 White Flag
• 🌈 Rainbow

Unicode has listed this as being Recommended for General Interchange (RGI), meaning major vendors support or have committed to supporting this sequence.

• Number of code points: 4
• Similar flags: 🏴‍☠️

By design, ZWJ Sequences don't require Unicode approval like a regular emoji does. As such, it's possible for vendors to add more of these by joining two existing emojis together, if they wish.

The drawback is that without consensus among vendors, users won't see custom ZWJ Sequences correctly across platforms and would instead see the individual parts. An example of this is:

• 🏴‍☠️ Pirate Flag

Using the same concept as Rainbow Flag, Twitter supported a Pirate Flag in their Twemoji set for a number of years by joining the 🏴 Black Flag and ☠️ Skull and Crossbones before Unicode listed this flag as RGI in 2018. All major vendors now support it.

🇺🇸 Flag for United States

Country flags such as the one for the USA are created by pairing two Regional Indicator characters.

Systems look up to see if a pair is valid, and show a flag instead.

This is a clever system that avoids Unicode needing to create a new code point for every country. The United States flag is a sequence of these two characters:

• 🇺 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter U
• 🇸 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter S

The list of valid sequences for country flags is based on ISO 3166-1 which is an internationally recognized list of countries and regions.

• Number of code points: 2
• Similar flags: 🇬🇧 🇨🇦 🇵🇭 🇩🇪 🇮🇳

ISO 3166-1 also includes codes for:

• 🇪🇺 European Union
• 🇺🇳 United Nations

These aren't countries, but Unicode doesn't make any particular distinction here. If there is a code on the list, it is listed as an emoji automatically, without any proposal required. Vendors aren't required to support all of these flags (Microsoft doesn't support any country flags in Windows, instead showing the two-letter country codes), but generally do support everything in the list for compatibility.

If the ISO 3166-1 standard was updated to add a new country tomorrow, that would almost certainly end up on the emoji flag list.

Aside: "Made Up" ISO 31661- codes

WhatsApp previously invented its own pairs of regional indicators for a few flags including Scotland (XS) and Texas (XT). These were used to display regions that weren't covered by ISO 3166-1 (the "X" at the front indicated these aren't part of the standard set).

These codes didn't work on other platforms, and would show just the letters if sent outside WhatsApp. In theory there was no reason other platforms couldn't have supported these, but the challenge would have been scaling it to more regions, if it became popular. In fact, this is pretty much why Unicode exists in the first place: instead of companies backwards-engineering how other platforms display various text characters, have a standard that all companies contribute and agree to use.

XT worked for Texas, but if this expanded to all US states, what would Tennessee use? Due to the way these codes were implemented, sets of three or more Regional Indicator characters aren't feasible, as text rendering engines will match any two with an emoji first (eg if XSD were used for South Dakota, text renderers would show XS as Scotland first, and be left with the D hanging at the end)

This became a non-issue in 2017, when subdivisions such as Scotland and Texas gained support in the Unicode Standard, albeit using a different method.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Flag for Scotland (GB-SCT)

Until recently, Scotland was not eligible for its own emoji flag, at least in the way Unicode encodes flags.

The 🇬🇧 United Kingdom is listed under ISO 3166-1 (the list of countries which a country or region needed to be listed on to get a flag).

However ISO has a different list which shows subdivisions for each country. You can view subdivisions for the UK or the USA, or any country in the world. These use the country code, followed by a subdivision. For instance Scotland is GB-SCT and Texas is US-TX. Each code is unique.

• Number of code points: 7
• Similar flags: 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Emoji 5.0 officially classifies every subdivision as being valid. Over 3,000 new flags are possible - if vendors wish to support them (not all subdivisions of the world actually have their own flags).

For the purposes of cross-platform consistency, Unicode has deemed three of these flags as RGI:

• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 England
• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scotland
• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Wales

This means major vendors support or have committed to supporting these flags.

Should a vendor, such as Google or Twitter, wish to support more subdivisions they are perfectly able to do this: provided there is a valid code to use. At present, Unicode doesn't assess proposals for subdivision flags in the same way as other emojis.

Above: The seven characters that make up a subdivision flag within Unicode.

Instead of weighing up each region of the world based on regular selection factors (distinctiveness, likely frequency of use, etc); Unicode instead informs vendors of new proposals for subdivision flags at its quarterly Technical Committee meetings^[1] and vendors are welcome to act on this information, should they wish to support additional subdivision flags.

Emojipedia most regularly sees requests for subdivisions that are perceived to have strong or independent identities; for example Brittany (Bretagne), Catalonia, Texas, California, Northern Ireland.^[2] It seems reasonable that companies would be cautious when considering new regions: some may be contentious, and others could suffer from "the whole set" issue (Texas is a well known flag in the USA, but what about Idaho?)

WhatsApp now supports the subdivision flags for England, Scotland, Wales and Texas using valid subdivision codes, and not the previous bolted-on region codes of XE, XS, XW, and XT.

Region Flags Without Code

A gap in Unicode flag support exists when it comes to geographical regions of the world which don't have an ISO region code or subdivision code.

For example: Native American tribe flags, Australian Aboriginal flag, Maori flag, Torres-Strait Islander flag.

These all represent people of a region or part of the world, but don't have an ISO subdivision code representing them. At present, Unicode doesn't have any mechanism to support these types of flags:

“Flags intended to represent specific countries or regions of the world must have a valid Unicode region code (based on ISO/BCP47) or Unicode subdivision code (based on ISO 3166-2).”

Other Flags

One category of flag that isn't specifically regional is that of various Pride Flags, with various designs representing various LGBT groups including bisexual, transgender or pansexual communities.

These technically fall under the same criteria as any emoji proposal. Is it distinctive, is it likely to be well used, is it open-ended?

The last question could be one area that pride flags struggle, if it is unclear which pride flags are notable enough for representation, and by which criteria they are more notable than others.

If it were determined that one or more pride flags do meet the criteria for acceptance as an emoji, the question for Unicode would become: which type of encoding would it use?

For example, a Transgender pride flag could be encoded as a concept (eg a new code point for "Transgender Pride Flag" or "Transgender Flag" which could have any design), or by its colors (eg a ZWJ Sequence of 🏳️💙💗 or similar), or something else. ZWJ Sequences are generally seen as more flexible, but it would be odd to use a color-based sequence, if the design for any particular pride flag changes over time.

Keeping in mind the multiple options for this flag currently used in various regions, vendors may also want to be sure that a single design is representative of a community internationally, rather than have split views on which design to show.

TL;DR: How Flags are Assessed

• Has ISO 3166-1 code: ✅ Automatically included
• Has ISO subdivision code: ✳️ All valid, up to vendors
• Geographical, but no code: ❌ Not supported
• Other / non-geographical: 👩‍⚖️ Subject to regular emoji selection factors

Details from Unicode about proposals for flags.

What This All Means

Not all flags are equal when it comes to standards bodies.

The fact that some obscure flags have an emoji (looking at you, Isle of Man) isn't necessarily because they met current-day criteria about usage, but could just be that they were on the right list at the right time (namely, all region codes on the ISO 31616-1 list).

Above: The Unicode code points inside various emoji flags.

More subdivision flags are relatively simple to support (from a technical persepctive) if vendors feel any would be worthwhile additions, and aren't likely to cause unintended consequences. Flags have real-world implications, too.

Flags for countries, regions or people not grouped under an existing standard like ISO (and thus not eligible for encoding) are a difficult case. Whether, perhaps, a standards body could add an ISO code for Australian Aboriginal or Torrest-Strait Islander people is something that might be considered by people in these communities.

As for other (non-geographical) flags, particularly pride flags, it seems as though some of these could be a real possibility, should they be able to make the case of meeting the current Unicode emoji selection factors.

Given the way flags act as a rallying icon for communities of people, it's clear there will always be demand for new flag emojis.

While the option to send any flag as an image exists on most platforms, the issue is both about practicality (emojis are more flexible than images) but further: representation.^[3]

Appearing on the emoji keyboard of any major platform is a sign of legitimacy. Why people want to see their flag as an emoji is clear. Determining the exact set of flags - or any category of emojis - to include on every device in the world is less clear.

As we saw in our Emojiology on 👻 Ghost, Halloween is downright haunted by emojis to mark the occasion. Close behind it, on the holiday front, is Christmas. From a 🎁 Gift under the 🎄 Christmas Tree to a 🍪 Cookie and 🥛 Glass of Milk set out for 🎅 Santa Claus, we have a sleighful of emojis for our digital Yuletide.

But among the Christmasy emojis is one whose seasonal significance may be less obvious to some: 👼, or Baby Angel. Its symbolism is rich and ancient—and, as we’ll see, flies to the very nature of emojis themselves. Let's get this Emojiology its wings.  

🔤 Meaning

Depicting a child with a halo and wings, 👼 Baby Angel can represent a biblical cherub, mythological cupid, decorative putto, or an angel as a supernatural being in general. It is often used to express affection for people, especially children at birth or, more sadly, after death. 👼 Baby Angel marks a wide range of content concerning love, Valentine's Day, positive feelings like gratitude, and the Christian faith, especially during Christmas.

💬 Development

👼 Baby Angel was added to the Unicode Standard in 2010 but was hovering over Japanese keyboards as early as 2000. That’s when SoftBank, for one, featured the full figure of a naked, chubby child with angel wings and a halo.

When Apple first supported emojis on iPhone OS 2.2 in 2008, it rendered 👼 Baby Angel as the head of a white-skinned boy with a blue halo over his light brown hair and the white, leaf-like wings at his neck.

His facial expression suggested a stoicism and even, ironically, devilish mischief that many thumbs miss—though perhaps not more so than Google’s truly divine blob.

For iOS 5.1, Apple opened 👼 Baby Angel's slight smile. It kept the mouth agape for iOS 8.3 but, with the addition of skin-tone modifiers in 2015, shaded his default color to yellow.

In 2016, iOS 10.0 brought 👼 Baby Angel into its current form. It displays as the head of gender-neutral baby with ears and a curly lock of hair. The head is crowned with a golden halo, a symbol of holiness, and is aloft on more feather-styled wings.

Most similar to Apple’s 👼 Baby Angel design are Facebook’s and Samsung’s, but with a brown tuft of hair. Google and Microsoft feature blue halos and brown and blonde hair, respectively. WhatsApp positions its wings on a bust.

Twitter, in keeping with the rest of their emojis, displays red / orange hair when no specific skin tone option is selected.

📜 Pre-Emoji Era

Nearly 20 years old, 👼 Baby Angel, as an emoji, isn’t a baby anymore, so to speak. In iconography, however, the figure of a baby angel is much, much older.

According to art historians and classical scholars, the contemporary imagery of baby angels originate as depictions as young male spirits on ancient Roman sarcophagi. They were daemones or genii—source of our words demon and genius, yes, but originally minor divinities that attended on or inspired people throughout their lives, not unlike guardian angels.

Italian Renaissance artists, notably Donatello, transformed them into the now-iconic plump infants called putti (singular, putto, Italian for “boy”). For a 2016 exhibition she curated, Dr. Cora Gilroy-Ware provided an interpretation of putti very apt for our purposes here:

Inspired by the demonic infants on ancient Roman sarcophagi, artists of the Florentine Renaissance employed the putto as a decorative framing device that could help animate an artwork and steer the viewer toward its overarching significance. It is in this sense that the putto prefigures the emoji. In the same way that emojis are used to express our emotions and refine the meaning of text, putti visualised otherwise intangible feelings, usually those experienced by the main (adult) actors in a carved or painted work.

These proto-emojis went on to adorn countless paintings, sculptures, architectural features, and monuments over the centuries, variously signifying religious, celebratory, mischievous, or musical sentiments or ideas. Grafted onto putti were cupids and cherubs.

Cupids represent the Roman god of love, Cupid, who took the form of a naked, winged boy with a bow and arrow, hence his association with Valentine’s Day today. His flight and youth are said to symbolize love’s fickleness and impulsivity. While cherubim in the Old Testament of the Bible are unearthly human-animal protectors originally distinct from angels, the beings morphed into baby angels in Christianity.

Angels are central to the Nativity, or the story of the birth of Jesus Christ that Christians celebrate at Christmas. In the Gospels of the New Testament, an angel reveals to Mary, Jesus’ mother, that she will carry the son of God as conceived by the Holy Spirit. An angel also informs Joseph, her husband, that he will foster-father Jesus. Angels rejoice over Bethlehem upon Jesus’ birth—or, as many of us know it from the Christmas song, Hark! he herald angels sing, "Glory to the new-born King!”

The Christ child, and the role of angels in his birth, make 👼 Baby Angel perfectly suited for our Christmastime screens. Angels as Christmas tree toppers and ornaments also nod to the angels in the Nativity story. And you better believe you can deck your halls with emojis.

✅ Examples

If, as Dr. Gilroy-Ware observes, its putto predecessors express such emotions as romance and merriment in art and architecture, then what sort of feelings does 👼 Baby Angel express?

Romance and merriment, for two things, if 👼 Baby Angel’s appearances around Valentine’s Day and Christmas are any measure.  

Outside these holidays, 👼 Baby Angel is widely used as a pictograph of endearment, if you will. It can stand for or alongside pet terms like baby, angel, and, of course, the duo baby angel. This is very common for birth announcements and suggests purity, innocence, goodness, and joy.

On a sadder note, 👼 Baby Angel also sees use in remembrances of loved ones who have passed away, with the emoji engaging ideas and images of heaven.

As angels are especially important figures in Christian belief, 👼 Baby Angel can expression various religious sentiments, not to mention its applications to all things angels in myth and fantasy.

By metaphorical extension, 👼 Baby Angel can communicate a sense of the “miraculous” or “blessed.”

👼 Baby Angel isn’t always so angelic, however. The emoji is sometimes used with irony to suggest its very opposite: that someone or something is being a bit diabolical 😈.  

🗒️ Usage

Many supernatural beings populate emojidom, including our friendly 👻 Ghost, 👽 Alien, 👹 Ogre, 🧙 Mage, 🧚 Fairy, 🧛 Vampire, 🧜‍♀️ Mermaid, 🧞Genie,  🧟 Zombie, and, also hard at work during Christmas, 🧝 Elf. There’s no Angel as such yet—though maybe you have hope, one of the many meanings of 👼 Baby Angel.

We do have, however, 😇 Smiling Face With Halo, whose angelic countenance often accompanies 👼 Baby Angel and amplifies its various senses, from Christmas cheer to newborn dears. Other emojis you can expect to see alongside 👼 Baby Angel are ✝️ Latin Cross, for overtly Christian an content; 🙏 Folded Hands, for blessings, gratitude, and praise, religious or not; other Christmas-themed emojis, from ☃️ Snowman to 🔔 Bell; and any number of heart-based emojis, especially the Cupid-evoking 💘 Heart With Arrow.

Voltaire—oh, you didn't know emojis were so cultured and well read?—once wrote:

It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.

As far as we’re concerned, we know one place where we can find them, though. They aren’t dancing on the head of pin, but they are certainly all over our keyboards. 👼⌨️👼📱👼

A comprehensive list of emojis used at Christmas time, where they come from, and most importantly: how much cheer they spread on each platform.

Both ⛄ Winter and 🎅 Christmas are well represented on the emoji keyboard. But have you taken a closer look at some of these emojis? I have. Covered in this article are the following:

🎅 🤶 🎄 🦌 🎁 ⛄ 👼

Of course there are many more emojis used around Christmas time than just these (see the full Christmas emoji list here), but we have presents to buy or out-of-office auto-responses to write. So let's get on with it.

🎅 Santa Claus

🎅 Santa Claus has a varied appearance between platforms:

Some points to note on the 🎅 Santa Claus Emoji:

• 🎅 Santa has existed in the Unicode Standard since 2010, and works on all major platforms today.
• The code point for this emoji is 🎅 U+1F385 FATHER CHRISTMAS which is due to Unicode using British English for most character names.
• If you don't have access to an emoji keyboard, you can copy and paste the Santa emoji from here: 🎅
• The localized name for this emoji today is “🎅 Santa Claus”, which has a different origin to Father Christmas; but has effectively merged to become the same jolly figure known internationally today:

Santa's appearance has evolved on various platforms over the years, but all have kept to the modern look of a large man with a white beard and red hat.

In 2012 a ticket was filed in Google's Android bug tracker titled “Santa Emoji is sad, when Santa should be jolly”, referring to the slight frown that adorned Santa's face at the time.

The frowning Santa “ruining Christmas” remained in the color version to be released on Android the next year, and gained a small smile the year after when an entry in the ticket tracker October 2014 quietly noted:

Marked as fixed.

Less obvious in this picture is that in 2013, Android's brand color palette didn't permit the color red to be used in any emoji. As such, Santa has an orange hat, which became red in 2014.

Other emojis that weren't allowed to be red on Android in 2013 were the ❤️ Red Heart (pink), 🌹 Rose (orange), 🍓 Strawberry (orange), 🍎 Red Apple (orange),  🚒 Fire Engine (orange), and 🔴 Red Circle (also orange).

Elsewhere, Apple's version of this emoji gained a 3D-rendered redesign in 2016 as part of a complete overhaul of Apple's emoji set in detailed high resolution.

And no, Santa didn't get jaundice in 2015 - this is the year skin tones were added to the Unicode Standard, resulting in most vendors making the default option—when no skin tone is chosen—yellow, similar to the other non-human smileys.

Apple is the only vendor to also give Santa a yellow beard when no skin tone is chosen. Originally hedged as a lighter-yellow, hinting at white, the current version has a distinctly yellow shade, including Santa's eyebrows.

While the yellow looks pretty odd out of context, this does better differentiate the default skin tone compared to any of the pale skin tones which look a realistic human shade.

Throughout 2018 Facebook has been revising and adding detail to its emoji set, resulting in possibly the most welcoming Santa of the bunch.

Efforts in 2016 to brand Messenger separately from Facebook, with even its own emoji set, have fallen by the wayside and the similarly jolly Messenger Santa is no longer in public use.

Microsoft has two fonts which include emojis — Segoe UI Symbol (a black and white font) and Segoe UI Emoji (a color emoji font).

Over time the color emoji font diverged from the original font, though both come included on Windows today. As of the Windows 10 “Anniversary Update” in 2016, all emojis have a thick stroke outline, in keeping with the look of modern Windows. Santa is no exception

🤶 Mrs. Claus

No one wants a lonely Santa, and as such, we should be pleased that he found a life partner in 🤶 Mrs. Claus.

Shown on most platforms as an older woman with white or gray hair, glasses, and a red Christmas bonnet, Mrs. Claus sees less frequent use on social media than her spotlight-stealing husband.

Some points to note on the 🤶 Mrs. Claus Emoji:

• Mrs. Claus has existed as an emoji in the Unicode Standard since 2016 (six years after Santa), and works on all major platforms today.
• If you don't have access to an emoji keyboard, you can copy and paste the Mrs. Claus emoji from here: 🤶
• The code point for this emoji is 🤶 U+1F936 MOTHER CHRISTMAS: a name that appears to be for consistency with FATHER CHRISTMAS, but doesn't seem to have any precedent prior to the emoji.
• The term Mother Christmas was first outlined in a working document prepared for the Unicode Technical Committee in January 2015 — an early attempt to add “gender pairs” to many emoji characters.
• The concept of Mrs. Claus does not originate with Unicode. The name Mother Christmas is difficult to find prior to 2015, but can be found in this 1988 poem from Roald Dahl.
• Santa's wife was apparently first mentioned over 150 years ago using the term “Mrs. Claus”.
• The localized name for this emoji today is 🤶 Mrs. Claus, which pairs nicely with localized name for Santa Claus.

🎄 Christmas Tree

An evergreen tree decorated with lights, tinsel, or other colorful items.

Some points to note on the 🎄 Christmas Tree Emoji:

• Christmas Tree has existed as an emoji in the Unicode Standard since 2010, and works on all major platforms today.
• If you don't have access to an emoji keyboard, you can copy and paste the Christmas Tree emoji from here: 🎄
• The code point for this emoji is 🎄 U+1F384 CHRISTMAS TREE
• Most platforms use the same design for the 🌲 Evergreen Tree and 🎄 Christmas Tree emojis, with the latter adorned in decorations.

🦌 Deer

What is the difference between a deer and reindeer? I have no idea. What I can tell you is that they look the same in my mind, and at emoji sizes, would be hard to tell the difference. Or would it?

Some points to note on the 🦌 Deer Emoji:

• Deer has existed as an emoji in the Unicode Standard since 2016, and works on all major platforms today.
• If you don't have access to an emoji keyboard, you can copy and paste the Deer emoji from here: 🦌
• The code point for this emoji is 🦌 U+1F98C DEER

🎁 Wrapped Gift

For some emojis, keeping a consistent emoji appearance between platforms is important to preserve the sentiment each intends to convey. For others—like this wrapped present—the style of wrapping paper or type of bow does little to affect how this will be perceived.

As such, here's how this emoji looks on different platforms today:

WhatsApp's gift appears to be the same sized box as the package emoji. LG, in its now-discontinued emoji set, doubles down on this being a Christmas present with red and green packaging.

Some points to note on the 🎁 Wrapped Gift Emoji:

• Wrapped Gift has existed as an emoji in the Unicode Standard since 2010, and works on all major platforms today.
• If you don't have access to an emoji keyboard, you can copy and paste the Deer emoji from here: 🎁
• The code point for this emoji is 🎁 U+1F381 WRAPPED PRESENT

⛄ Snowman Without Snow

Without snow? What!? Never fear, the snowman itself is made of snow, but there is no snow falling from the air around this emoji.

Some points to note on the ⛄ Snowman Without Snow Emoji:

• Snowman Without Snow has existed as an emoji in the Unicode Standard since 2009, and works on all major platforms today.
• This character pre-dates Unicode emoji support by one year.
• Years earlier, a fez-wearing Snowman character was part of Unicode 1.1 (1993). This character was given emoji status in 2015.
• If you don't have access to an emoji keyboard, you can copy and paste the Snowman Without Snow emoji from here: ⛄
• The code point for this emoji is ⛄ U+26C4 SNOWMAN WITHOUT SNOW

In recent years, most platforms have moved from an unadorned head or a fez to a design showing the snowman wearing a top hat—something seen in earlier versions from Twitter, Microsoft and Facebook.

Apple also added stones to make a mouth, instead of the previously ambiguous snow cavity of a mouth.

More Christmas Emojis

What exactly constitutes a Christmas emoji varies from person to person. These are some of the most commonly trending emojis on Emojipedia at this time of year, indicating a correlation for many people:

🔥 👶 🎶 🌟 ❄️ 🔔 ⛄️ 👼 🦌 🍪 🥛 🎅 🤶 🧝‍ 🎁 ⛪ 🕯  👪 ✝️ 🎄 🍷 🍴 🧦

View the Emojipedia Christmas Emoji list for names and links to learn more about these characters or take a look at our Emojiology series with the recent look at the history behind the 👼 Baby Angel emoji.

Or Festivus, if you prefer.

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WhatsApp has released new emojis for Android, along with design modifications for its native emoji set.

The latest update means that WhatsApp users on Android now have access to both the 157 new Emoji 11.0 additions from 2018 as well as redesigned versions of previously available emojis.

Above: A selection of new emojis now available on WhatsApp for Android.

These are the first major updates to the WhatsApp emoji set since its introduction to Android and non-Apple platforms in October of 2017.

Changes in this update actually came as part of two releases:

• WhatsApp 2.18.379: released mid-December 2018 with new Emoji 11.0 support, and no design changes.
• WhatsApp 2.19.7: released mid-January 2019 with design changes, and no new emoji support.

Each update was preceded by a beta release one month prior (November 2018 for the new emojis, and December 2018 for design changes) to the final public version.

Details for both December 2018 and January 2019 WhatsApp emoji updates are included in this emoji changelog.

🆕 New

WhatsApp now supports all six new smiley emojis from Emoji 11.0: 🥰 Smiling Face With 3 Hearts, 🥴 Woozy Face, 🥵 Hot Face, 🥶 Cold Face, 🥺 Pleading Face and 🥳 Partying Face.

As with Emoji 11.0 updates from other vendors, various hair styles are expected to be quite popular for those seeking more options for self-representation in their emoji keyboard.

The new hair styles are 👨‍🦰 Red Haired Man and 👩‍🦰 Red Haired Woman, 👨‍🦱 Curly Haired Man and 👩‍🦱 Curly Haired Woman, 👨‍🦳 White Haired Man and 👩‍🦳 Woman, White Haired, and 👩‍🦲 Bald Woman and 👨‍🦲 Bald Man.

👨‍🦲 Bald Man is of particular note here, as unlike the other man hair style variants, he is lacking a moustache: perhaps a gesture towards alopecia inclusivity.

These hair styles are created through combining either 👨 Man or 👩 Woman with one of four new "emoji component"^[1] code points in what is known as a ZWJ sequence.

Of note, however, is that the new emoji components used to create these hair style emoji (for example 🦰 Emoji Component Red Hair), are not given graphic representation in WhatApp's design set.^[2].

Six new food-related emojis from Emoji 11.0 are also present: 🥭 Mango, 🥬 Leafy Green, 🥯 Bagel, 🧂 Salt, 🥮 Moon Cake, and 🧁 Cupcake.

Perhaps having seen the fuss around Apple's plain bagel emoji, this bagel comes with "everything" seeds and cream cheese included.

A total of ten new animals^[3] are now available in WhatsApp for Android, including 🦢 Swan, 🦙 Llama and 🦘 Kangaroo:

All are rendered full-bodied, as opposed to being represented solely by the animal's face. This is interesting in the case of 🦝 Raccoon, as the majority of other vendors instead opt for an image of the mammal's forward-facing head. However, Apple's version of the critter is a full-bodied rendering. It's possible WhatsApp is looking to maintain consistency with Apple in its set, as opposed to matching other vendors.

Also featured within Emoji 11.0 are new 🦸 Superheroes and 🦹 Supervillains.

Above: Women and Men 🦸 Superhero and 🦹 Supervillain emojis^[4]. All support skin tone modifiers.

Emoji 11.0's other additions include new 🦶 Foot and 🦵 Leg body parts, scientific objects such as 🧲 Magnet, some new activity-based objects like the 🥍 Lacrosse, as well as other new miscellaneous objects.

All of the new emojis added to WhatsApp can be viewed here.

🆙 Changed

WhatsApp 2.19.7 features a number of updates to emoji designs previously featured on the platform.

The majority of these are very subtle changes: for example, the refinement of the shadows and the lightening of black to charcoal gray throughout the set's color palette^[5].

There are, however, several changes that are more obvious upon direct comparison between WhatsApp 2.19.7 and prior releases. One of the most frequent motivators for emoji design modifications is emoji design convergence and increasing the accuracy of the item on the display. Below are a selection of these changes.

🤪 Zany Face now features a playfully protruding tongue instead of a wide grin, as is the case for most other vendors.

🤯 Exploding Head now has its mushroom cloud unevenly cracking through the scalp. Previously it emerged via a smaller circular segment in its head.

😇 Smiling Face With Halo now has the halo tilted to one side.

💁‍♂️ Man Tipping Hand and 💁‍♀️ Woman Tipping Hand now feature bigger smiles.

🐖 Pig has lost its ear-to-ear smile and the size of the ears have increased.

🐺 Wolf Face has redesigned fur and facial features.

🐰 Rabbit Face now has a smaller tooth and no white stripe between its eyes. The eyes have been moved further apart, now sitting at the edge of the curvature of the bunny's face.

The redesigned packaging of 🍟 French Fries has the back obscured by taller, slimmer fries.

👗 Dress is now purple not pink, and the belt is now purple instead of teal.

🧥 Coat is now brown, having previously been turquoise.

🌝 Full Moon Face and 🌚 New Moon Face have opened their eyes wider, displaying a less sultry glace than before.

The tissue of the 🧠 Brain is now a more pink shade, in keeping with other vendors.

👂 Ear has been reshaped and includes more detail and shading.

👃 Nose has more prominent nostrils.

The 🇲🇷 Flag of Mauritania now has a red stripe at the top and bottom of the design, reflecting a change made to the nation's flag following a referendum in August 2017.

📶 Release

These design changes are now available for Android users in WhatsApp 2.19.7 and above.

Emoji 11.0 additions are available in WhatsApp 2.18.379 and above, but the design changes require the latest release.

WhatsApp for iOS devices continues to use native Apple emoji designs, and no emoji updates are provided at a system-wide level (iOS 12.1 for the same new emojis).

At the time of writing, WhatsApp web has yet to add the updates listed here, but these are expected to roll out to the website in the coming months.

• Browse every WhatsApp Emoji
• Changed in WhatsApp 2.19.7
• New in WhatsApp 2.18.397

A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words. So, too, at least in the realms of texting and social media, is an emoji. Behold the wide eyes and red cheeks of 😳 Flushed Face.

In recent years, 😳 Flushed Face has made some headlines all on its own. That is, some high-profile figures have used its high eyebrows as a sole form of commentary for topics that might make some people, well, a bit flushed.

For instance, in summer 2017, former White House intern Monica Lewinsky notably tweeted a single 😳 Flushed Face in response to Anthony Scaramucci.

Scaramucci, who served briefly and controversially as Director of Communications under President Donald Trump, likened reporter Ryan Lizza to Linda Tripp, once a colleague of Lewinsky who secretly recorded phone conversations at the center of her political sex scandal with President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

😳, indeed.

Lewinsky followed up her 2017 😳 Flushed Face with another in January 2019 during a partial shutdown of the US government, calling up the 1995 shutdown when Lewinsky and Clinton first encountered each other.

Again, 😳.

Lewinsky’s lone blushers convey so much with so little. Shock. Surprise. A sense of ironic embarrassment and self-consciousness perfectly savvy and sharp in the internet age.

As an emoji, it seems 😳 Flushed Face isn’t just worth a thousand words—but a thousand emotions as well. In this Emojiology, no, we’re not going to break down all the political drama, but we are going to get to the bottom of the 😳 Flushed Face emoji.

🔤 Meaning

😳 Flushed Face depicts a smiley with wide eyes and red cheeks, as if blushing with embarrassment, shame, or shyness. It may also convey a wide range of other feelings to varying degrees of intensity, including surprise, disbelief, amazement, excitement, and affection.

💬 Development

While entering into wide release under Unicode 6.0 in 2010, 😳 Flushed Face was already red on Japanese keyboards as early as 2000. That year, SoftBank offered a square smiley animated with a reddish-orange bar of flush spreading over its eyes and nose.

Until rolling out Experience 9.0 in 2018, Samsung featured a more crestfallen character—and, like SoftBank, it also flashed its flush over its nose. This design may seem unusual to many, especially Westerners more accustomed to illustrations of embarrassment with blushing cheeks, but it comes from a visual convention in Japanese magna and anime, which inspired some of the earliest emojis.

In manga and anime, the familiar blush on character’s cheeks does communicate the emotional state of embarrassment, but it's often stylized across the nose, as we see with Samsung’s original design. (In a previous Emojiology, we saw another such manga/anime-derived shorthand in 😪 Sleepy Face’s snot bubble, which indicates feeling tired or being asleep.)

With Experience 9.0 in 2018, Samsung brought its design more in line with Apple’s, which displays wide, white eyes under raised eyebrows, a small, closed mouth, and, of course, its namesake flushed cheeks. Google similarly fashioned its 😳 Flushed Face with Android 8.0 in 2017, updated from its memorably bashful blob in Android 4.4–5.0. So did Microsoft the year before with its Windows Anniversary Update, previously featuring something of a woozier, boozier smiley under its Windows 8.0–8.1 operating systems.  

The updates from Microsoft, Google, and Samsung cemented a convergence in form for 😳 Flushed Face, reducing confusion and misunderstanding as it appears across major platforms—but not necessarily a convergence in its meaning. Its platter-sized eyes and sky-scraping eyebrows suggest astonishment, but its burning cheeks and pinched lips appear at once abashed and alarmed, flustered and fearful. This mix makes for a lively and colorful expression, and interpretations of it are many.

Reacting to LeBron James’s move to the Los Angeles Lakers in July 2018, fellow NBA player Trae Young tweeted a 😳 flushed with a kind of dismaying incredulity, for one example.

A week later, for another example, celebrity and model Kylie Jenner Instagrammed two 😳 Flushed Face’s and a 🙂 Slightly Smiling Face when she revealed she removed her cosmetic lip fillers. Jenner’s 😳 is flushed with a vulnerable but knowing Can you believe it?! Do you like it?!

✅ Examples

As Young and Jenner demonstrate, 😳 Flushed Face is emotionally versatile, so let’s have a closer look at its full résumé.

True to its name, 😳 Flushed Face expresses various degrees of embarrassment or shame, often humorous or self-deprecating in tone.

Other strong emotions, including more positive feelings like affection, attraction, and admiration, can color a person’s cheeks pink, thus calling for 😳 Flushed Face.

Bashfulness, shyness, and coyness are very much in the expressive domain of 😳 Flushed Face.

Thanks to its wide eyes, 😳 Flushed Face also conveys feelings of awe and disbelief, variously tinged with fear and wonder.

The force of 😳 Flushed Face can also be more subtle in tone, as if issuing a nervous or excited Eep…

…and an awkward or playful Oops!

🗒️ Usage

Whether you want to indicate something is mortifying or phenomenal, the cherry-hued chops of 😳 Flushed Face has just the expressive chops, as it were. Be mindful, however, that this range opens a lot of room for interpretation—and misinterpretation.

At smaller sizes, also take care not to confuse 😳 Flushed Face with other emojis featuring prominently raised eyebrows, such as 😲 Astonished Face and 😯 Hushed Face, though their applied meanings can overlap.

And should any misunderstandings arise with 😳 Flushed Face? Fret not. We’ve got the perfect emoji for you: 😳. Plus, it’s just emojis, folks. It’s not like it’s, oh, political intrigue or anything. 🙈  

Today EmojiOne has released an new version ofits emoji suite, updating a considerable number of pre-existing emoji designs: a now well-established practice for the freemium emoji vendor.

First previewed in October 2018, no new emojis are featured within this update as the release of EmojiOne 4.0 in August 2018 brought the vendor in line with Unicode's emoji list for 2018 (Emoji 11.0).

Above: A selection of new emoji designs included in EmojiOne 4.5.

For the last number of years EmojiOne's updates have often included several hundred changes across their emoji set. EmojiOne 4.5. is no exception.

A total of 1,682 emojis have been updated between EmojiOne 4.0 and EmojiOne 4.5.

This propensity for extensive modifications has meant that many EmojiOne designs have experienced as many as five major revisions since the suite was first launched in September 2014.

While Emojipedia's go-to examples of 🍣 Sushi and 👹 Ogre have not received revisions in EmojiOne 4.5, one frequently-updated emoji that has received another revision is Twitter's so-called "most popular least popular emoji", the 🚡 Aerial Tramway.

Above: The update history of 🚡 Aerial Tramway on EmojiOne over the years.

The change to 🚡 Aerial Tramway is one of many changes within what EmojiOne has referred to as a "complete upgrade" of the travel and place emojis.

EmojiOne 4.5 also features a reworking of many objects, including the 🧨 Firecracker and 🧩 Jigsaw (only recently introduced in EmojiOne 4.0) as well as other miscellaneous changes across other categories.

Regarding the selection of changes in this release, EmojiOne CEO Rick Moby told Emojipedia:

“For this update, we tackled ground-up designs for the vast majority of emoji within the travel, places, and objects categories. Releasing new designs bi-annually is the sweet spot for us, and we’ll continue this path going forward.”

🆙 Changed

🥴 Woozy Face now features a wavy, smooth mouth instead of sharp zig-zags.

🥯 Bagel now features a cream cheese spread, a popular design modification for vendors in recent months.

🧦 Socks now feature a 💩 Pile of Poo emoji pattern.

📱 Mobile Phone is more detailed and displays July 17 / World Emoji Day on the lock screen.

🗓️ Spiral Calendar now displays the month of July with the seventeenth day marked with a red "x" - another nod to World Emoji Day.^[1]

🔫 Pistol remains a real-life firearm, but now features additional detailing on its handle.^[2]

🗞️ Rolled-Up Newspaper now features a black-and-white version of the 🎑 Moon Viewing Ceremony emoji with the word the "JOY" prominently placed.^[3]

💳 Credit Card is now gray, no longer at an angle, and features a signature of "JoyPixels".^[3:1]

🧩 Jigsaw has swapped its plain orange colour for a vibrant sun louging across a watery hozison.

🏯 Japanese Castle now features an additional storey as well as several cherry blossom trees at is base.

🔤 Input Latin Letters has had the font of its "abc" characters modified^[4]

Further examples of modified emoji designs can be found EmojiOne's own blog post or on Emojipedia.

📶 Release

EmojiOne 4.5 is available now. Like EmojiOne 4.0 and EmojiOne 3.0 before it, this release is available on a freemium basis, with licensing required for some but not all usage types.

EmojiOne 4.5 is free for personal use, on the web, or as an option in apps. A premium license is required if EmojiOne 4.5 designs are to be used in print or commercial advertising. This update is free for all premium license holders of version 4.0.

• Browse every EmojiOne emoji
• New in EmojiOne 4.5
• Changed in EmojiOne 4.5

Twitter has today begun to roll out a new update to its native Twemoji emoji set: Twemoji 11.3. The first update to the vendor’s designs in 2019, it features a series of minor adjustments to several previously-released emoji designs.

Above: a selection of the revised emoji designs featured within Twemoji 11.3

While this update features no new emojis, Twitter is typically one of the first vendors to support new emoji releases. Judging by previous years, users might expect to see new emojis within the as-of-yet-unfinished Emoji 12.0 appearing across Twitter around June of 2019.^[1]

🆙 Changed

The design modifications made within Twemoji 11.3 primarily focused on the posture and definition of human emojis various appendages (i.e. their hands and feet). However, additional changes have also been made across other emoji categories. Some of the most noteworthy are detailed below.

Each of the expressive cat face emoji have been updated to feature a pink nose, reshaped white whiskers and new shadowing in their ears. 😼 Cat Face With Wry Smile is shown below as an example of these feline facial tweaks.

🐺 Wolf Face now features larger ears and protruding tufts of fur on its cheeks, with this new design echoing the creature’s appearance across most other major vendors.

🦒 Giraffe is now shown as a full-bodied (and full-necked) animal as opposed to just featuring a side profile of the mammal’s head.

Other animal emoji which have experienced design changes in Twemoji 11.3 are 🐕 Dog, 🐶 Dog Face, 🐈 Cat, and 🦄 Unicorn Face.

The 👌 OK Hand has been subtlety tweaked to feature more detailed bends in the finger’s phalanges.

Other hand gestures featuring minor tweaks include ✌ Victory Hand, 🤞 Crossed Fingers and ✊ Raised Fist.

💃 Woman Dancing has increased details in her arms, hands and shoes.

🧜 Merperson and their variants now has larger and more distinctly coloured hair, detailed hands and more realistic curvature in their arms.

Other person-based emoji which have received similar revisions to limbs and posture include 🏃 Person Running, 👯 People With Bunny Ears, 🧘 Person in Lotus and 🏄 Person Surfing.

🎛️ Control Knobs now displays a set of four knobs instead of just one, as per other major vendors.

The 🇭🇷 Flag of Croatia has had its central coat of arms widened to better match how it is depicted within the European nation’s flag.

📶 Release

Rollout of Twemoji 11.3 began today across Twitter's various platforms. In the coming days Twemoji 11.3 support will be made available for all users of the Twitter website, the Twitter mobile site, and Tweetdeck.

Mobile devices running Android OS 7.x or earlier will also soon display these designs thanks to an update made by Twitter to its Android apps in May 2018. Devices manufactured by the likes of Google and Samsung will therefore not display their native emoji set within Twitter, but Twemoji 11.3. instead.

Users of the iOS Twitter app will continue to see the native Apple emoji set.

It is expected that the modified designs featured within Twemoji 11.3 will be available on Twitter's Open Source Twemoji Repository in the coming weeks as well.

• View all Twemoji emojis
• View all Twemoji designs changed in this update
• View the Twemoji 11.0 changelog, featuring the introduction of Emoji 11.0 designs

The final emoji list for 2019 has now been approved by the Unicode Consortium and includes a total of 230 new emojis coming to major platforms this year.

Additions include previously drafted candidates such as a Flamingo, Otter, and Guide Dog, as well as a Waffle, Hindu Temple, Sari, Sloth, and Mate.

Circles and squares gain new colors in this release and a much requested white heart emoji is now available for the first time.

Above: Every new emoji approved in 2019. Video: Emojipedia.

In the sixth major emoji update since 2014, much of the low hanging fruit has been addressed prior to this release. Skin tone support was added to the Unicode Standard in 2015, increased representation of women in 2016, gender inclusive people in 2017 and hair color additions in 2018.^[1]

2019 expands the scope of people that can be represented, including people with various disabilities (proposed by Apple last year), a gender inclusive couple, as well emojis which permit a mix of skin tones for people holding hands.

Above: Evolution of the emoji set 2014—2019. Images: Apple (2014—2018), Emojipedia (2019). Emojipedia composite.

Emoji 12.0 is comprised of 59 distinct new emojis; 75 when gender variations are taken into account; and 230 new emojis when all skin tone options are also included.

Unicode's announcement today indicates that all the documentation required for vendors implement the new emoji set is now complete. Links to relevant data files, technical documentation and updated charts are all linked within Unicode's post, and will be used by developers to add emoji support to operating systems, apps, and web platforms throughout 2019.

Above: All 230 emojis approved for release in 2019. Image: Emojipedia Sample Image Collection.

Emojipedia has today updated its sample images as a demonstration of how these 230 new emojis might look when coming to various systems throughout 2019.

These original designs have been created in a glossy "Apple-like" style and show the range of new emojis on offer.^[2]

Please feel welcome to use these images in press coverage with attribution to Emojipedia. A link back is appreciated! For enquiries about these designs, please get in touch.

Resources

• 2019 Emoji List (Emoji 12.0)
• Emojipedia Sample Images for 2019 (Images)
• Emojipedia Sample Images for 2019 (Video)
• Unicode Emoji 12.0 Data Files
• Updated Unicode Emoji Charts

📋 2019 Emoji List

Shown below are are each of the new emojis approved in Emoji 12.0, minus any skin tone variations.

Image	Emoji
	Yawning Face
	Pinching Hand With Skin Tones
	Ear With Hearing Aid With Skin Tones
	Deaf Person With Skin Tones
	Deaf Man With Skin Tones
	Deaf Woman With Skin Tones
	Mechanical Arm
	Mechanical Leg
	Man With Probing Cane With Skin Tones
	Woman With Probing Cane With Skin Tones
	Man in Motorized Wheelchair With Skin Tones
	Woman in Motorized Wheelchair With Skin Tones
	Man in Manual Wheelchair With Skin Tones
	Woman in Manual Wheelchair With Skin Tones
	Person Standing With Skin Tones
	Man Standing With Skin Tones
	Woman Standing With Skin Tones
	Person Kneeling With Skin Tones
	Man Kneeling With Skin Tones
	Woman Kneeling With Skin Tones
	People Holding Hands Gender Inclusive, With Skin Tones
	Guide Dog
	Service Dog
	Orangutan
	Sloth
	Otter
	Skunk
	Flamingo
	Garlic
	Onion
	Waffle
	Falafel
	Butter
	Oyster
	Beverage Box
	Maté
	Ice Cube
	Hindu Temple
	Manual Wheelchair
	Motorized Wheelchair
	Auto Rickshaw
	Parachute
	Ringed Planet
	Diving Mask
	Yo-Yo
	Kite
	Safety Vest
	Sari
	One-Piece Swimsuit
	Briefs
	Shorts
	Ballet Shoes
	Banjo
	Diya Lamp
	Axe
	Probing Cane
	Drop of Blood
	Adhesive Bandage
	Stethoscope
	Chair
	Razor
	White Heart
	Brown Heart
	Orange Circle
	Yellow Circle
	Green Circle
	Purple Circle
	Brown Circle
	Red Square
	Orange Square
	Yellow Square
	Green Square
	Blue Square
	Purple Square
	Brown Square

Gender Inclusive Couple

For the first time, Unicode is adding an emoji for two gender neutral / gender inclusive people holding hands in 2019, with support for different skin tones for each of the people.

This can represent either those who don't identify with the existing gender options, or merely those feel their appearance or style is closer to these designs than the options for Women or Men.^[3]

People Holding Hands complements existing hand-holders that have been in the Unicode Standard since 2012:

• 👭 Women Holding Hands
• 👫 Woman and Man Holding Hands
• 👬 Men Holding Hands

Technically none of these are necessarily in a romantic relationship, as the official designation is merely “people holding hands”. As with any emoji, the meaning comes down to context.

Mixed Skin Tones

One of the most frequent requests sent to Emojipedia is about the lack of an emoji or emojis to represent black families. Emoji 12.0 doesn't deliver any changes to the set of family emojis, but does for the first time, list options for all variations of people holding hands.

Unicode doesn't preclude vendors from supporting skin tones on families, but the list of RGI (Recommended for General Interchange) emojis in Emoji 12.0 focuses on the 70 additions required to allow these couples to have a mix of skin tones.

Facebook users already have access to families with a shared skin tone (125 combinations), and Windows users have a selection which allows a mix of any skin tone for any family member (52,000 combinations).

Colors

Until now, the mix of colors available for squares, circles and hearts has varied for historical reasons.

Most of the original shapes were added to the Unicode Standard for compatibility reasons; and a number of hearts have since been added (🖤 Black Heart in 2016 and 🧡 Orange Heart in 2017 (to complete the rainbow of hearts).

With Emoji 12.0, every shape (squares, circles and hearts) will have the choice of the following colors:

• 🔴 Red
• 🧡 Orange
• 💛 Yellow
• 💚 Green
• 🔵 Blue
• 💜 Purple
• ⬜️ White
• ⬛️ Black
• 📦 Brown

Hearts already cover most of these colors leaving only White Heart and Brown Heart to be added. White Heart remains one of Emojipedia's most popular requests, with many people using the non-emoji character ♡ White Heart Suit in its place.

Above: New colored shapes in Emoji 12.0. Image: Apple and Emojipedia / Emojipedia composite.

These new colors open the door for ASCII art on steroids. They could also pave the way for custom emoji colors, if used within ZWJ Sequences.

Vendor Preview

For most users, these new emojis will come to devices in software updates throughout 2019.

Those subscribing to the Windows 10 Insider "fast ring" builds gained access to a number of new emojis last year, while Emoji 12 remained in beta.

A number of other designs from Google and Apple are also shown below. All are subject to change prior to final releases, but give a reasonable indication of how these might look on Android and iOS.

Above: A look at how the new emojis from major vendors, coming in 2019. Images: Vendors / Emojipedia composite.

Release

The Unicode Consortium will release Unicode 12.0^[4] on March 5, 2019.

Changes to Emoji 12.0 since the last draft in October 2018 include some emoji names (One-Piece has been renamed One-Piece Swimsuit), removal of some emoji skin tone support (the last draft showed one family supporting a shared skin tone - but not the other 19 families), and the addition of the gender inclusive pair holding hands (previous versions only included women and men).

Above: New in 2019: Flamingo, Sloth, Otter, Orangutan. Images: Emojipedia Sample Image Collection.

Unicode announced the publishing of Emoji 12.0 data files on 2019-02-05 (California / US Pacific Time), and noted that the announcement is ahead of the Unicode 12.0 release to give vendors time to work on their color emoji designs.

Expect to see these on most major operating systems in the second half of 2019. Generally speaking, these tend to come to Android in beta around August, and to iOS in October or November.

Resources

• 2019 Emoji List (Emoji 12.0)
• Emojipedia Sample Images for 2019 (Images)
• Emojipedia Sample Images for 2019 (Video)
• Unicode Emoji 12.0 Data Files
• Updated Unicode Emoji Charts

Above: A selection of new emojis coming in 2019. Image: Emojipedia Sample Image Collection.

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Earlier this month, the Unicode Consortium debuted its final list of new emojis for 2019—and we debated it.

Some men felt challenged by what Pinching Hand implied about their bodies while some women challenged Drop of Blood for not being explicit enough about theirs.

Many of us squeed at the fresh, furry faces of Sloth and Otter, while others squirmed, concerned that emojis are becoming something of a zoo.

The 2019 class of emojis is more inclusive than ever, representing, for instance, people with disabilities as well as providing more gender and racial diversity in relationships. But as their ranks grow, it seems emojis themselves are becoming more divisive than before.

So, just in time for Valentine’s Day, we thought we’d look back to 2018 with an Emojiology on a sophomore emoji that brings us all together: 🥰, or Smiling Face With Hearts.

🔤 Meaning

🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts depicts a yellow face with smiling eyes, rosy cheeks, and several hearts floating around its head, as if in a cloud of love. It commonly conveys warm and fuzzy feelings, especially feeling loved or being in love with someone or something. It may also convey various happy, affectionate sentiments more generally, such as feeling content or blessed.

💬 Development

We first swooned for 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts in 2018, when it was approved as part of Unicode 11.0 under the name Smiling Face With Smiling Eyes and Three Hearts, with Smiling Face With 3 Hearts used as the original short name.

Smiling Face With Hearts no longer references the specific number of floating hearts in the latest version of Unicode's emoji documentation, though the original code point name can never be changed.

Despite the name originally stating "three" hearts, Samsung upped the love with four hearts while Apple features the same smiley as for its ☺️ Smiling Face. Google, WhatsApp, and Facebook do repurpose their 😊 Smiling Face With Smiling Eyes.

Nitty-gritty differences aside, all versions of 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts share a lovey-dovey look. Its contented countenance, cherubic cheeks, and hovering hearts—typically two to the right, one to the left— suggest someone basking in the warmth and glow of love.

Especially the love of our keyboards. 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts was the most popular new emoji in the 2018 cohort, which included other beloved newbies such as 🥴 Woozy Face and 🥳 Partying Face.

When it comes to love, 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts has serious competition—and not just on Valentine’s Day. ❤️ Red Heart, 😘 Face Blowing a Kiss, and 😍 Smiling Face With Heart-Eyes are consistently three of the most used emojis around the year and across the world.

Only time—and people updating their software so they have the latest emojis—will tell if 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts shacks up with those darlings.

⚖ 🥰 vs. 😍

As we discussed in an earlier Emojiology, 😍 Smiling Face With Heart-Eyes often expresses feelings of love, infatuation, and adoration. 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts, as we’ve defined it here, often conveys feeling loved or being in love with someone or something.

These senses are very similar, and indeed, many people use 😍 Smiling Face With Heart-Eyes and 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts to similar ends.

Many even pair 😍 Smiling Face With Heart-Eyes and 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts for style or emphasis.

Still, we might begin to articulate a grammar, if you will, of their emoji emotion. 😍 Smiling Face With Heart-Eyes has a more excited and enthusiastic expression, giving the smiley a kind of activeness that shouts: “I go gaga for you!”

🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts is glowing but gratified, radiant but relaxed, giving it a certain passiveness that sighs: “You give me the warm and fuzzies!”

They’re like two peas in pod: A more active 😍 Smiling Face With Heart-Eyes sends the love and a more reactive 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts receives it.

But like 😘 Face Blowing a Kiss, 😍 Smiling Face With Heart-Eyes can come across as a more romantic emoji, which may deter some from sending it to friends and family. ❤️ Red Heart, and its many heart-themed companions like 💕 Two Hearts or 💖 Sparkling Heart, can be less amorous in tone, but also less personal.

We’ll see how it comes of age, but 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts may just fill the gap: It's sentimental but not sexual, loving but not lustful.

If you’re scrolling your screens for a way to convey You make me feel good or You’ve made me feel special but don’t want to risk seeming too forward or intimate, then 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts will do the job.

🗒️ Usage Notes

Of course, like many other emoji, we're already seeing a great range in tone and topics for 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts. It can show affection for people—and pizza, puppies, or K-pop. It can express love, being in love, and loveliness, but also other tender feelings like satisfaction or gratitude.

None of this is to say you can’t tap out a 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts to your sweetheart on occasions like Valentine’s Day. Its love can be platonic and playful, yes, but it can also be passionate.

So, too, can 😍 Smiling Face With Heart-Eyes, 😘 Face Blowing a Kiss, and ❤️ Red Heart. That’s the beauty of our favorite emojis: Thanks to their versatility, they know how to spread the love.

And perhaps all our debates and divisions on emojis, whether in number, design, or representation, are just lover's quarrels. The popularity of 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts proves—as we see with the enduring appeal of 😍 Smiling Face With Heart-Eyes, 😘 Face Blowing a Kiss, and ❤️ Red Heart—two things.

We love smileys, and we love heart-themed emojis. That should make us feel, well, 🥰.

Today at a press event in San Fransisco, Samsung announced the Galaxy S10 series of phones which all ship with the recently rebranded Samsung One UI. This custom Android implementation changes a considerable number of emoji designs, and shows new emojis from 2018 on the keyboard for the first time.

Above: A selection of revised emoji designs included in Samsung One UI.

As with previous Samsung emoji updates, a number of emoji changes made in Samsung One UI appear to have been made in the name of greater cross-platform convergence in design. Almost all of the animal emojis have been updated, with most now being depicted more realistically. Take 🐘 Elephant, for example.

Above: 🐘 Elephant as displayed within Samsung Experience 9.5 and Samsung One UI 1.0.

This is the first Samsung update to be released the under the "Samsung One UI" moniker. Previous versions of Samsung's custom Android implementation were branded as "Samsung Experience" (and before that, Samsung TouchWiz UI, with the last update to emoji designs coming in Samsung Experience 9.5.

As previewed in December of last year, Samsung One UI has re-introduced a selection of emoji previously made unavailable on Samsung devices in an August 2016 update: ✝️ Latin Cross, ☪️ Star and Crescent and ‼️ Double Exclamation Mark.

Above: Three emojis removed from Samsung devices in a 2016 software update and re-introduced in Samsung One UI.

Also returning to emoji support with this update are ©️ Copyright and ®️ Registered.

Gone now are the final remnants of a long-standing Samsung emoji quirk: letters (usually two or three letter initials) marked on a variety of objects.

Such initials were removed from 📛 Name Badge, 📓 Notebook, 📒 Ledger and 🏷️ Label in the last Samsung emoji update, but they have now also been removed from the likes of 💳 Credit Card, 📕 Closed Book, 📦 Package and 🚅 Bullet Train.

Emoji 11.0 support was introduced in August 2018 but failed to add any of the new emojis to the Samsung keyboard. As such, users could not enter any new emoji unless using a third party keyboard, or copying and pasting from the web.

Above: The new Samsung keyboard (right) compared to the previous layout (left). Photos: Jeremy Burge.

One UI does finally make the new emojis available for input from the built-in Samsung keyboard. Interestingly, the keyboard also now shows all emojis notably larger (on the keyboard) than in previous releases.

🆙 Changed

🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts now displays three hearts floating above the face instead of four^[1].

🤥 Lying Face now has a longer nose.

😻 Smiling Cat Face With Heart-Eyes now includes a more natural face shape, replacing the previous circular face.^[2]

🙈 See-No-Evil Monkey, 🙉 Hear-No-Evil Monkey and 🙊 Speak-No-Evil Monkey redesigns hands and faces.

🐕 Dog now has more realistic proportions and all four legs are now visible. May also be a different breed.

🐩 Poodle has its modified continential fur changed from a pastel pink to a more natural white/grey and nose is now black instead of pink.

🦄 Unicorn Face now features a more detailed muzzle as well a bigger horn, larger ears and a multi-colored mane of hair.

🐢 Turtle has been updated to include a mouth, as well as a longer neck and is now showing all four of its legs.

🐸 Frog Face now features distinctive markings on its cheeks and the crown of its head.

🦖 T-Rex is now green and features a re-shaped head and limbs, leading to a less cute and more cinematic appearance.

📅 Calendar now displays the date as July 17, the date of World Emoji Day.

🍪 Cookie now displays a single chocolate chip cookie instead of two.

💯 Hundred Points now has a handwriting style more similar to other vendors.

⚖️ Balance Scale now appears as an actual object, as opposed to a white symbol on a square green background.

🗜️ Clamp has been re-designed as a C-clamp and no longer displays a small cardboard box in its vice grips.

💖 Sparkling Heart now has inverted the placement of its two stars, with these stars now featuring four points instead of eight. A very close match to Apple's design.

🏧 ATM Sign now displays as a symbol instead of a building, as per other vendors.

⏸ Unchanged

The various 👯 People With Bunny Ears emojis continue to display a single bunny-eared person instead of two matching individuals. Many vendors used to display a single person for this emoji, but now Samsung remains the last major holdout using this style.

Above: 👯 People With Bunny Ears as it is displayed across a series of major vendors' emoji sets.

Since Samsung TouchWiz 7.1 in 2016, 🇺 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter U displays a capital "V" (instead of U) and 🇻 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter V displays a "U" (instead of V).

The incorrect switch of 🇺 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter U and 🇻 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter V remains unchanged in this update.

Above: 🇺 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter U and 🇻 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter V as they are displayed across a series of major vendors' emoji sets.^[3]

As regional indicator letters are not intended be displayed in isolation (they are intended solely for the creation of flag emojis) this design mis-match isn't of major consequence to most users, but is an odd bug to last for so many years.

The 👁️‍🗨️ Eye in Speech Bubble emoji has also not included in this update, having been removed from Samsung's emoji as of 2018.

📶 Release

While Samsung One UI has been rolling out to certain Samsung devices as early as December 2018, today marks the release of the Samsung Galaxy S10 which is the first device to run Samsung One UI as its default OS upon release.

As is the norm with Samsung updates, rollout of One UI 1.0 to additional Samsung devices is expected to take place over the coming weeks and months, though its availability will vary by location, device and mobile phone carrier and many devices will not get updated at all.

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.

• Browse every Samsung emoji
• Emoji changed in Samsung One UI
• The previous Samsung emoji changelog
• Samsung's emoji adventures

Earlier this month 230 new emojis were approved for release in 2019; but what about all the other requests?

The number one emoji wanted by Emojipedia users is “happy tears”: an emoji to show a sense of being proud or emotional in a happy way. Crying with a smile but certainly not laughing.

Another popular request which featured in the 2018 and 2017 top emoji lists is a salute.

With a new white heart emoji coming out this year (a popular request in past years), the demand is now on for a pink heart emoji.

Hearts are always popular, and some of our most requested in all shapes and sizes. Trailing a pink heart are requests for a pale blue heart, rainbow heart, hands in the shape of a heart as well as an index finger and thumb twisted to form a small heart.

Other popular requests in the past twelve months have been for all manner of flags, as well as the return of classic smileys from other platforms or older iOS releases.

In no particular order, here is a compilation of top requests from Emojipedia readers in the past twelve months.

Smileys and Gestures

• Touched / proud / emotional face (a smiling face with a single tear / aka "happy tears")
• Shy / bashful face
• Grimacing Face With Smiling Eyes (as seen on iOS prior to 2017)
• Sad Cowboy Hat Face ("sad yeehaw")
• Ninja (now shortlisted for 2020)
• Saluting Face (or person in the military)
• Fingers together ("why you no")
• Heart Hands
• Finger Heart

People

• Black families (and to a lesser extent, families with other skin tones or a mix of skin tones)
• People with white skin and brown hair
• Red hair option for all people (see the potential challenges for this)
• Woman in Tuxedo (already supported by Twitter)
• Man holding a baby (often the breastfeeding emoji is assumed to be a woman holding a baby instead of breastfeeding)

Accessibility

• Person With Crutches
• Person With Cane

Food and Drink

• Bean
• Blackberry
• Bubble Tea (shortlisted for 2020)
• White Wine
• Slime
• BBQ / Grill
• Durian

Animals

• Honey Badger
• Triceratops
• Black cat

Sport / Activities

• Clarinet
• Flute
• Disco Ball

Objects

• Toothbrush

Transport

• Drone
• Scenes (countryside / hills)
• Tumbleweed
• More planets

Symbols

• Pink Heart
• Pale Blue Heart
• Bitcoin
• WiFi
• "No cars" (to pair with 🚷🚳)

Flags

• Aboriginal Australian
• Torres Strait Islander
• Native American Tribes
• Transgender (the pink and blue design)
• Bisexual
• Bretagne
• Catalonia
• Kurdistan
• Tibet
• Northern Ireland
• NATO
• Pan-Africa

Already Approved

Last year published a similar list of top emoji requests for 2018 which reported a number of entries that went on to be approved as part of Emoji 12.0. These include:

• Person in Wheelchair
• Mate
• Flamingo
• Sloth
• White Heart

Context

One difficult part of gathering emoji requests is that people often feel passionately about an emoji in a disproportionate way to how often an emoji might be used.

There may be no lobbying effort to have a waffle emoji approved, yet chances are it would be used a lot more than a NATO flag which has many people trying to make the case for its popularity.

Additionally, a number of examples in this list are wider than the scope of most emoji keyboards at present.

While this list provides an insight into the requests Emojipedia has received in the past year, the Unicode Consortium is the body reponsible for approving new emojis and not Emojipedia.

Those wishing to formally propose an emoji can do so by checking the emoji selection factors and submitting a proposal.

It should be noted that at the time of writing, the 2019 emoji additions haven't come to any major platforms. Many top requests are for emojis already approved but not yet on devices.

We'll check back next year to see which of these, if any, make the final cut for 2020.

On Friday, February 22, the London Times ran an article on emojis that made many of us go 😂, 🙃, or 🤔 online.

Jonathan Ames reported that British lawyers are urging judges “to learn to interpret the use of emojis,” which are showing up in court hearings more and more. This use includes their “sexual and sometimes sinister” secret meanings, Ames added.

The Times then illustrated, er, attempted to illustrate some “not so innocent” examples in an explainer many found hilariously out of touch.

Some were humored by its stiff translation of slang. 🔥 Fire, for example, can represent “having a good run of form.” Others scorned its air of novelty, as if it was breaking news that kids these days use  🍆 Eggplant (Aubergine) “indicate an erection.” Yet others puzzled at its claims themselves: “The bathtub can be used to mean coffin.”

🛀 Person Taking Bath can mean...⚰️ Coffin? Let's explain The Times explainer.

🍁 Maple Leaf

📰 Times description

The maple leaf can mean drugs in general, or cannabis in particular.

🔤 Emojipedia definition

A red, orange or yellow maple leaf, often associated with Canada due to the maple leaf on the Canadian Flag.

🔎 Analysis

Thanks to its rough resemblance to cannabis (pot leaf), 🍁 Maple Leaf does mark content related to smoking marijuana. Its tone, however, generally appears more stylistic than secretive, and its application to other illicit drugs is limited. This emoji is most widely used to represent fall or autumn, leaves and trees, nature and the outdoors—and oh, Canada.

❄️ Snowflake

📰 Times description

Cocaine, with a street name of snow, can be represented by the snowflake emoji.

🔤 Emojipedia definition (abridged)

Snow falling to the ground in the form of a unique ❄ snowflake.

🔎 Analysis

Snow has been slang for cocaine (and other hard drugs) since at least the 1910s. It still sees some use as such, including, occasionally, in the form of ❄️ Snowflake and other similar emojis. As with 🍁 Maple Leaf, however, ❄️ Snowflake's use as slang for "cocaine" appears mostly for color, not code. Expect to see ❄️ Snowflake far more widely used for various content concerning cold weather or temperatures, winter, and winter-related actvities.

😶 Face Without Mouth

📰 Times description

The face’s lack of lips can imply intimidation, or a warning to stay silent.

🔤 Emojipedia definition (abridged)

A yellow face with simple, open eyes and no mouth, as if at a loss for words. Meaning widely varies, but commonly conveys speechlessness, humility, and silence. May also convey moderately negative emotions, such as disappointment, frustration, or sadness.

🔎 Analysis

😶 Face Without Mouth's lack of lips does see some use in contexts of intimidation, such as the expression snitches get stitches, i.e., you'll get hurt if you tell on someone. The extent to which these uses are intended as meaningful threats, however, is something the courts—and not newspaper articles— get to determine.

🛀 Person Taking Bath

📰 Times description

The bathtub can be used to mean a coffin.

🔤 Emojipedia definition (abridged)

A gender-unspecified person taking a soothing bath in a white tub with a shower head. Commonly used for various content concerning bathing, washing, cleaning, and bathrooms more generally. May also represent relaxation and self-care.

🔎 Analysis

As many people noted of The Times article, why would people use 🛀 Person Taking Bath to represent a coffin when there is already a ⚰️ Coffin emoji?

Before ⚰️ Coffin was supported as an emoji in 2015, people did very occasionally use 🛀 Person Taking Bath for "coffin," thanks to the enclosed, supine pose of the bather depicted in the emoji.

Limited evidence for this idiosyncratic application is found around 2013–14. Since 2015, however, use of 🛀 Person Taking Bath for "coffin" appears extremely rare. The Times may have based its claims on February 2018 reports about a study on alternative emoji use, including instances of 🛀 Person Taking Bath for "coffin" in a small survey.

🔥 Fire

📰 Times description

The flame is used to suggest someone is hot, or sexually attractive, or having a good run of form.

🔤 Emojipedia definition (abridged)

A small flame, mostly yellow but red at the top. Can be used to describe something or someone being hot, or in the context of being exemplary (lit, slang).

🔎 Analysis

🔥 Fire is, and has been, extensively used for fire-related slang. This includes senses of "excellent" (lit), "attractive" (hot), "scathing or searing" (sick burn), or "performing exceptionally well" (on fire), among other senses. In fact, 🔥 Fire is so closely associated with such slang that people even say "fire emoji" in spoken contexts.

🍑 Peach

📰 Times description

The peach’s fleshy exterior can be used to symbolise buttocks.

🔤 Emojipedia definition

The fleshy, pinkish-orange fruit of the fuzzy peach, shown with green leaves and sometimes a stem. Thanks to its distinctive cleft, the emoji is commonly used for “buttocks.”

🔎 Analysis

🍑 Peach is so commonly, and belovedly, used for "buttocks" that in 2016, Apple reverted its design for its 🍑 Peach emoji when users felt its update looked less like the body part. Like 🍆 Eggplant, 🍑 Peach is an example of an emoji whose figurative applications appear to outrip its literal ones.

An Emojipedia analysis in 2016 showed just 7% of uses of 🍑 Peach intended to represent the fruit, with a majority using it for sexual or fitness-related purposes.

🍆 Aubergine (Eggplant)

📰 Times description

One might be forgiven for interpreting the inclusion of this emoji as an invitation to enjoy moussaka. However, the aubergine is also used to indicate an erection.

🔤 Emojipedia definition (abridged)

A long, bulbous, bright purple eggplant, or aubergine in British English, shown with a leafy stem...Widely used to represent a penis.

🔎 Evidence

🍆 Eggplant is so widely used to represent penises and related sexual content that Instagram banned the hashtag #🍆 on its site for a time in 2015. This emoji does get used literally in food contexts, but this application is less common than its well-established phallic symbolism.

The Times explainer wasn't entirely wrong, but it was overgeneralized and overly alarmist. Yes, 🍁 Maple Leaf  can reference cannabis, but it doesn't expose some dark, sordid underworld of teenage drug abuse. It was also obvious and oblivious. In 2019, 🍆 Eggplant representing penises isn't a secret—and 🛀 Person Taking Bath representing a coffin was never widespread.

As emojis become more common in our communications, the law should become more emoji-literate. But judging by the internet's lampooning of it, The Times explainer is not the best place to start. ⚰️

In this month's Emoji Wrap podcast John Kelly (Senior Emoji Lexicographer at Emojipedia) joins me to discuss the latest emoji happenings.

“Hot takes galore on the internet with the new emoji release, how to spot a PR campaign, and officer I'm calling about a car with an emoji license plate.”

Every month I send a newsletter containing topics in the wider world of emoji^[1] and some months the podcast accompanies it. Subscribe to the podcast using your preferred app so you get the next episode automatically:

• Apple Podcasts
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Now sent to over 16,000 people. Sent no more than once a month, and your email is never used for any other reason at all. If you want to get the latest emoji news summary in your inbox, just enter your email here. ↩︎