Last week the freemium emoji vendor JoyPixels released its latest emoji update, JoyPixels 5.5. The update features new gender neutral emojis, additional combinations of people holding hands, and a number of design updates.

Above: All the new emojis featured in JoyPixels 5.5.

This release makes JoyPixels the third emoji vendor to support the 168 new emojis included in Emoji 12.1 which was approved in the second half of 2019.

This follows Apple's iOS update in late 2019 and Twitter earlier in 2020.

It's worth pointing out that this has nothing to do with the 117 new emojis approved last week as part of Emoji 13.0, which will come to most platforms later this year.

Above: the new 🧑🦰 Person: Red Hair, 🧑🏫 Teacher and 🧑🦯 Person with Probing Cane emojis featured in Emoji 12.1 as they appear in JoyPixels, Apple and Twitter repsecitvely.

Near 1400 emojis have had their designs updated in JoyPixels 5.5. Such large-scale design changes are the norm for JoyPixels: the EmojiOne 4.5 update (under the emoji vendor's previous moniker) and JoyPixels 5.0 update featured 1,682 and 1,683 design changes respectively.

🆕 New

All 168 new emojis from Emoji 12.1 are featured in JoyPixels 5.5.

138 of these new emojis focus on introducing new non-gender-specific variants to previously available people emojis, such as 🧑🍳 Cook and 🧑🦽 Person in Manual Wheelchair, while the remaining 30 expand the number of combinations of the various 🧑🤝🧑 People Holding Hands emojis.

Included amongst the new gender neutral additions are variations of Emoji 11.0's four hair style emojis: 🦰 Red Hair, 🦱 Curly Hair, 🦳 White Hair and 🦲 Bald.

Above: the new non-gender-specific variants of the four hair style emojis as they appear in JoyPixels 5.5.

There are also gender neutral individuals using a 🦽 Manual Wheelchair, a
🦼 Motorized Wheelchair, and a 🦯 Probing Cane.

Above: the new gender neutral accessibility emojis in JoyPixels 5.5.

The last subcategory of new gender neutral emojis is professional identities, featuring gender neutral depictions of the likes of 🧑‍🚀 Astronaut, 🧑‍🚒 Firefighter, and 🧑‍🎤 Singer.

Above: a selection of some of the new gender neutral profession-based emojis available in JoyPixels 5.5.

Finally, rounding out Emoji 12.1 are new variants of 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 People Holding Hands, 👭 Women Holding Hands, and 👬 Men Holding Hands.^[1]

Above: a selection of the new variants of the various 🧑🤝🧑 People Holding Hands emojis in JoyPixels 5.5.

🆙 Changed

🤣 Rolling on the Floor Laughing is now shedding tears of joy, as per the design of all other vendors.

🦒 Giraffe now appears as a full-bodied (and full-necked) creature as opposed to just displaying the animal's head.

A similar change has been made for both 🦓 Zebra and 🦏 Rhinoceros.

The 🌮 Taco emoji's filling now features what appears to be pickled red onion.

🥘 Shallow Pan of Food now features much more detailed shrimp, appearing very similarly to the vendor's 🦐 Shrimp emoji design.

While our frequent go-to emoji for JoyPixels updates, 🍣 Sushi, has not been updated, the 🍱 Bento Box has had its featured sushi updated.

🪒 Razor now appears as a modern safety razor instead of a straight razor. It also features the JoyPixels logo.

📶 Release

JoyPixels 5.5 is available now. Like the previous JoyPixels update, it is available on a freemium basis, with licensing required for some but not all usage types.

• Browse every JoyPixels emoji
• New in JoyPixels 5.5
• Changed in JoyPixels 5.0

Spelling out words with emojis is not the most typical use of these tiny images, but it is fascinating.

On September 24, 2019, Lizzo tweeted a peach emoji. This is an extremely common emoji for her to use. In fact, in 2017 the singer/rapper/songwriter/flautist, who often twerks while playing the flute, called the peach emoji her “favorite emoji.”

Lizzo unsurprisingly tends to evoke the peach emoji in its well-established sense of the butt. But this past September, she used it differently.

Lizzo used 🍑 Peach to spell out the word ‘impeachment’ on the day that Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry of President Trump.

Writing out ‘impeachment’ as ‘im🍑ment’ is an example of what I like to call emoji spelling. So what exactly is emoji spelling? Is this a common use of emojis? Does it differ from classic rebus puzzles?

Obligatory Cher Mention

Lizzo is not the first person to use the peach emoji to spell out a form of the word ‘impeach.’ Cher had already done this in 2017—also notice how she uses 🐝 Honeybee to spell out both the words ‘because’ and ‘be.’

Cher, in turn, is not the first person to use the peach emoji in this way either. There’s evidence of people using the peach emoji to spell out variants of the word ‘impeach’ since as early as 2012 on Twitter. For reference, that’s the year that Apple first made the emoji keyboard accessible as a default setting with the release of iOS 6.0.

Cher has also used the peach emoji to spell out the concept of feeling peachy, so she, like Lizzo, bounces between meanings of this particular emoji with ease.

What is Emoji Spelling?

Emoji spelling is when you replace a letter or string of letters in a word with one or more emojis. Generally the emojis used to replace letters are selected phonetically based on what the emojis depict. Emojis of recognizable concrete nouns are more likely to be used in emoji spelling than more abstract emojis.

This is not how people generally use emojis.

Most of the time, people use emojis in a similar way to tone, gesture, or facial expressions. In written communication, this type of information can so easily be lost, but throw in a few faces or hearts, and suddenly a message has a lot more warmth or sarcasm or joy or whathaveyou.

You can see this play out in the emoji frequency data collected by the Unicode Consortium. The most frequently used emojis as of January 2020 are faces and hearts. According to this dataset, 😂 Face with Tears of Joy and ❤️ Red Heart are roughly twice as frequent as the two next common emojis, 😍 Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes and 🤣 Rolling on the Floor Laughing. While the red heart emoji depicts a concrete noun, heart emojis are often used to mark a loving tone rather than merely as literal hearts.

To contrast this, in emoji spelling, emojis are selected not chiefly for the their tone, but rather for the sound they make when you describe them aloud and how much that sound resembles an existing word or combination of letters. This is far more similar to the edge case of emoji in rebus-like puzzles than the use of emojis by the general population.

Is 'Im🍑ment' a Rebus?

Rebuses are puzzles that use images, letters, and numbers to represent words. In rebuses, images of concrete nouns show up the most. You tend to see things like an eye standing in for the pronoun ‘I,’ a knot for the word or sound ‘not,’ and a bee for the word or sound ‘be.’

Some people might call ‘im🍑ment’ a rebus. Ben Zimmer, lexicographer and member of the National Puzzlers League, said this use of the term ‘rebus’ is totally fine by him:

“‘Rebus’ historically has been used to cover not just puzzles to decipher but other representations of syllables, words, or phrases by pictures or symbols.”

Zimmer explained that when rebuses first became popular in sixteenth-century France, they were used in all sorts of non-puzzle contexts, like on coats of arms and in other forms of heardlry. “Later, in the UK and the US, rebuses were deployed for a variety of playful purposes, and it's just that kind of playfulness that motivates rebus-style emoji usage as well,” Zimmer said.

Lewis Carroll wrote rebus letters to his friends, and Zimmer mused that if he were still alive today, Carroll would be “emojifying all over the place.”

Rebuses vs Emoji Spelling

I call ‘im🍑ment’ emoji spelling and not a rebus to differentiate between very specific contexts and purposes. For me, despite the term’s historical meaning, a rebus is a puzzle to be solved, while emoji spelling acts more like a spelling variant. Though perhaps it’s more that emoji spelling is a special type of rebus rather than another thing altogether.

One possible purpose of emoji spelling that past rebus use lacks is making something unsearchable by its conventional spelling online. This might be used to protect someone from trolls searching specific keywords as with Voldermorting. In Voldermorting, a term is playfully respelled (possibly with symbols or emojis) or replaced with another word entirely so that a post or message is readable by humans but not by machines.

It has long been a practice to swap out characters with symbols. Take, for example, the grawlix (also sometimes called the obscenicon). A grawlix is a symbol or string of symbols—often !, @, #, $, %, &, and *—used to visibly bleep out swear words. This self-regulated form of censorship has been a common trope in comics since the turn of the twentieth century, but over the years this practice has been used far beyond its original context.

Emojis can be used in a similar way. Any round emoji might be used as the letter ‘O,’ and ❌ could be used to represent the letter ‘X.’ Getemoji.com has gone as far as to recommend an entire emoji alphabet (or 'emojibet'). One of their recommendations is ⛽ Fuel Pump. I wrote about this exact example of emoji spelling in 2017 on my blog Lexical Items:

“[A]n earlier design of the fuel pump on some platforms included a giant ‘G’ on the front of the pump to stand for the word ‘gas,’ (a very US-centric design as this is not called ‘gas’ globally). This prominent letter placement inspired some people to start using this emoji to spell out words. Well, at least it inspired people to spell out one word: ‘gang.’ Even though the ‘G’ has been removed from most of the fuel pump emoji designs, this use is still alive and well. Just do a search for ‘⛽🅰️🆖’ or ‘⛽ang’ to see some examples.”

On a public social media account, a person might want to obscure their conversations about gangs to keep them from being easily searchable by law enforcement.

Emoji spelling might also be used to get around censorship, like 🍚 Rice and 🐰 Bunny as used to talk about #MeToo in China. In a 2018 article on The Conversation, Meg Jing Zeng explained that “‘Rice bunny’ (米兔), pronounced as ‘mi tu,’ is a nickname given to the #MeToo campaign by Chinese social media users” to circumvent government censorship.

In all these cases, emoji users create a sort of spelling variant to be used again and again rather than a puzzle to be solved once and then forgotten. However, as an emoji spelling becomes increasingly well known, it becomes more and more easily searchable by trolls, law enforcement, or censors.

These machine unreadable examples of emoji spelling feel distinct from the various historical purposes of rebuses. Whether you call them emoji spelling or rebuses, these use cases are significant to digital culture and worth discussing.

Why Is This Use of The Peach Emoji Gaining Traction?

Any time you have trendsetters with the fanbases of Lizzo or Cher use a newer word or expression—or emoji spelling in this case—their fans take note and will often start adopting this use themselves. This is a very real way language evolves.

I also think butts are somewhat responsible here. The non-literal canonical meaning of 🍑 Peach is, of course, ‘butt.’ Many of the people using the emoji spelling 'im🍑ment' revel in the fact that they're evoking a butt. It adds snarky levels to the word.

Won't People Be Confused?

Two days after Lizzo’s ‘im🍑ment,’ tweet, Heather Schwedel, writing for Slate, worried that we’re now in a state of “linguistic confusion” because of the multiple meanings of 🍑 Peach: “If someone texts you a peach emoji, what are you supposed to think?” Is it a sext or wry political commentary?

As with any communication, context is vital to correctly interpreting the meaning of emojis. Lizzo doesn’t have a problem seamlessly switching between different meanings of the peach emoji, or even combining them. If her fans are confused, she doesn't mind spelling it out for them.

Of the 117 new emojis approved last month, Pinched Fingers, Transgender Flag, and Smiling Face With Tear were the most popular on social media.

Least popular? Bucket, Placard, and Elevator.

An analysis of new emoji popularity has been created by Emojipedia by measuring the number of retweets each emoji received in Emojipedia's #Emoji2020 thread on Twitter.

The 117 new emojis for 2020 form part of Emoji 13.0 which was announced by the Unicode Consortium in January 2020.

Designs and rollout dates will vary by vendor, with most platforms expected to support the new additions in the second half of 2020.

Actual use of new emojis cannot be measured until after they have rolled out to major platforms, so these popularity numbers serve as an indicator of what may be frequently used when software updates come to phones in the second half of the year.

What is clear from social media data is that communities often rally behind flags (despite their relatively low use for countries), and smileys and gestures are always some of the most popular additions. Given this, it's not a surprise to see the top entries being a gesture, a flag, and a smiley.

In that context, is the Disguised Face a dud? To rank between Lungs and Potted Plant doesn't bode well compared to the usual high rankings of smileys. Or does it just mean people didn't have much to say about it, but would in fact use it a lot?

What cannot be determined from this data is how social media engagement translates to real-world use, nor the effect of the category order of the Twitter thread had on the engagement numbers.

This data was measured for one week from the announcement of the final emoji list. Numbers are provided below.

Instagram has begun testing a change to how emojis appear on Android phone, with some users now seeing Facebook emoji designs (instead of system-wide emojis provided by Google or Samsung in comments) DMs and stories.

This update follows the recent "Instagram by Facebook" splash screen which began appearing in late 2019, making the link between Instagram and its parent company more clear to users.

Above: Native emoji support (left two columns) is being replaced with custom Facebook emoji designs (right) on Instagram for Android. Image: Vendors / Emojipedia composite.

Initial reports^[1] of the emoji change first appeared in early February 2020,^[2] with the rollout appearing to be limited to a small numbers of users at this time.

A Facebook company spokesperson confirmed that testing is taking place, telling Emojipedia via email:

“We’re testing a number of ways to improve emoji support on Instagram, so that all emojis can be rendered on all Android operating systems.”

Implied in the statement from Facebook is that one major reason for this update is to permit users stuck on old Android releases to see new emojis as they come out. While using Facebook designs isn't required to do this, it is one way to ensure consistency of emoji selection and design, at least for Instagram's users on Android.

Android's Varied Emoji Sets

Over the years, emoji support on Android has been an issue for apps, with many users left unsupported on old versions of the operating system.

The result has been millions of people with outdated Android devices who are unable to view new emojis promptly after they are released, or ever.

Google attempted to resolve this issue with the release of a free library that apps could use to provide new emoji support, even on old Android releases. Some apps have taken advantage of this, but not all.

It's now commonplace on Android for apps to implement their own designs which replace those provided by the system. On Android the following apps eschew emojis from Samsung or Google in favor of their own designs:

• Twitter (Twemoji designs)
• Facebook (Facebook designs)
• Messenger (Facebook designs)
• WhatsApp (WhatsApp designs)
• Telegram (Apple designs)
• Instagram (Facebook designs, new)

Above: Appearance of 💁 Person Tipping Hand across various apps on Android. Image: Vendors / Emojipedia composite.

Facebook Emoji History

It is not expected that this change will roll out to all Instagram for devices any time soon. Facebook has a much-storied history of taking its time with emoji updates and release.

Take, for example, when Facebook began to test the Facebook 3.0 emoji update in in June of 2018. It wasn't until August of the same year that a majority users began to see the change.

Above: Facebook emoji designs now showing in Instagram for Android for some users. Image: Domi on Twitter.

Previously, Facebook had two distinct emoji design sets: one for its social network site ("Facebook") and another for its Messenger platform. However, just over a year after the distinct Messenger set was released, it was discontinued in October of 2017.

Above: The short-lived Messenger emoji set, released separately from Facebook's own emoji designs, in 2017.

This move to display Facebook emojis on Instagram may be considered another step towards unifying the social media giant's branding, while also providing newer emoji support on Instagram for older devices.

Release

Currently only a small selection of Instagram users appear to be seeing any change to their emoji designs. The majority continue to see native emojis from either Samsung (on Samsung phones) or Google (on all other Android phones) at the time of writing.

With Facebook's history of selective testing and conservative rollout schedules, it's not yet clear if or when the majority of Android users will start seeing the new emojis.

iOS users continue to see native system-wide emojis from Apple within apps for Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Are you seeing the Facebook emoji designs within your Instagram app? Let us know.

• All current Facebook emoji designs
• Facebook 4.0 Emoji Changelog from September 2019
• Facebook 3.0 Emoji Changelog from December 2018

This week Google released an update to its emoji keyboard allowing emoji mashups within Gboard for the first time. The new functionality allows users to mix and match certain emoji expressions, with the results suggested in the keyboard for input as a sticker.

Named Emoji Kitchen by Google, this emoji mashup feature is available in the latest beta release of Gboard for Android.

Above: The Emoji Kitchen feature shown on a Google Pixel device, displaying "mash up stickers" based around the 🤯 Exploding Head emoji.

In naming this new feature the "Emoji Kitchen", Google seem to be channeling a sense of creative cookery (and maybe a little of the phrase "everything but the kitchen sink").

When a user opens the Gboard emoji area from the keyboard (where emojis, gifs and stickers access is stored), the tab featuring the emojis from the Unicode Standard now featured an additional area embedded above the search featured and the various emoji categories: this area is effectively the “serving plate” of the so-called Emoji Kitchen, and is where Gboard’s suggested emoji mash-ups will be displayed.

Above: the Emoji Kitchen “loading” display before an emoji is selected by a user.

When an user then enters an emoji via the Gboard keyboard, this area is then populated with different sticker options using “mashed up” versions of Google’s own emoji design set.

Above: the Emoji Kitchen offering mash up options of the 🥶 Cold Face emoji on WhatsApp for Android. Note that the stickers utilise Google's emoji designs despite Gboard being used on a Samsung device.

The initial mash ups offered for an eligible emoji generally appear to feature one of the following other emojis as the design's coalition partner, as it were:

• 😂 Face with Tears of Joy
• 😍 Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes
• 😘 Face Blowing a Kiss
• 😔 Pensive Face
• 🥺 Pleading Face
• 🐵 Monkey Face
• 👻 Ghost
• ❤️ Red Heart

Not all emojis are supported via the Emoji Kitchen, however. It appears to be focused around emoji designs with a single face, or some select designs in which a face can be easily supplanted. Examples we have located include 🐷 Pig Face and 🐼 Panda (though not all animal face designs are supported), 🌵 Cactus, 💀 Skull, and 🎃 Jack-O-Lantern.

There are also different color combinations of the 💯 Hundred Points and a variety of heart emojis (which themselves can have 👀 Eyes added).

When sent, the emoji mash ups are sent are received as sticker images akin to the Bitmoji, Google's "Mini" stickers, and the Memoji Apple features directly in its emoji keyboard. That is to say that they will be sent as an isolated picture to the recepiant, instead of being placed inline with a string of text or Unicode emojis.

Above: a sent 🤓 Nerd Face emoji sticker from the Emoji Kitchen in Facebook's Messenger app.

The Kitchen will also only display mash up options for the last eligible emoji in a string of emojis.

⌨️ Which Apps?

Google has itself cited the following platforms as being compatible with the following messaging platforms:

• WhatsApp
• Messenger
• Snapchat
• Telegram
• Messages by Google
• Gmail

Emoji Kitchen is not available for more traditional social networking platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (including direct messaging on these latter two platforms).

It's not yet clear if support for more apps will be the responsibility of app developers, or if Gboard can enable this in future releases.

🤖 Emoji Mash Up Bots

While this is a new feature for Google’s Gboard, many emoji aficionados will be familiar with these kinds of design mash up.

Last year a Twitter account titled The Emoji Mash Up Bot was created by Louan Bengmah of Nantes in western France. The account began posting combinations of two different emojis from the smileys category every 60 minutes, with these mash ups using Twitter’s Twemoji design set.^[1]

Above: a sample tweet from the The Emoji Mash Up Bot.

The bot account rapidly gained followers due to retweets from the likes of Lil Nas X^[2], who yesterday also shared his support for Google's new feature.

the prophecy has been fulfilled https://t.co/P59cXzCbbO

— nope (@LilNasX) August 4, 2019

my time has arrived https://t.co/TSCX1JA5Nz

— nope (@LilNasX) February 12, 2020

In fact, due to the popularity of the account, Bengmah released his own free sticker pack of 29 of the most popular posts from the Emoji Mash Up Bot account in August of last year.^[3]

For his part, Bengmah appears pretty pleased with the release of the Emoji Kitchen:

Even thought I'm not part of it, I absolutely love the idea. Like it's said on this article, the emojis here are way more interesting than @EmojiMashupBot's because they're smartly designed and aren't randomly generated. https://t.co/u0sEGN8EYw

— Emoji Mashup Boi 👦🏽 (@louanben) February 12, 2020

Speaking to Emojipedia, Bengmah stated:

“I love the idea of merging emojis together to expand our 'emoji collection'. And I'm happy to see that the idea is becoming more popular, whether I had something to do with it or not... I have to say, I'm not sure Google got it's inspiration from my bot. I honestly have no idea.”

Google's Jennifer Daniel has been openly experimenting with such emoji mash ups herself since 2017, as shown through a collection of tweets referring to them as emoji ligatures:

Made a few emoji ligatures I wish were supported cross platforms.

A challenge: how many distinct emoji expressions can you make in a hour? pic.twitter.com/k3O6lH6Kpn

— Jennifer Daniel (@jenniferdaniel) July 10, 2017

Tag yourself (i'm all of them). pic.twitter.com/6ZXyyIstZO

— Jennifer Daniel (@jenniferdaniel) July 15, 2017

That being said, the popularity of the Emoji Mash Up bot could certainly have acted as an external proof-of-concept for the Google Design team.

📶 Release

If Gboard users would like to cook up their own emoji mash-up stickers now, the Gboard Beta programme is still accepting members at this time of writing. A rollout for regular Gboard users is likely to take place after a reasonable beta testing period.

At the time of writing, no announcement has been made about whether this will be made available on Gboard for iOS.

• All current Android emoji designs
• The Android 10 Emoji Changelog

Google has begun its rollout of support for Emoji 12.1, at least for Pixel owners, providing 168 new emojis to those on Google devices.

This update brings the latest gender neutral emojis such as a non-gender-specific Cook, a Person with Red Hair, as well accessibility-focused emojis such as Person With Probing Cane - all of which previously had options only for Women or Men.

Above: all 168 new Emoji 12.1 emojis now available via Android 10.1. Image: Google / Emojipedia composite.

Announced as part of 'more features dropping for Pixel', this update isn't a general Android release available to all phones - though presumably the same emojis will be included as part of a future Android update, and not stay Pixel-exlusive like other 'Pixel Feature Drop' additions.

All 168 new emojis included in this update were approved last year as part of Emoji 12.1; which was an off-cycle minor emoji release that filled in some gaps created by gender neutral and hand-holding sequences from Emoji 12.0 earlier in the year.^[1]

Each of these new emojis are constructed using zero-width-joiner (ZWJ) sequences, which all use existing emoji codepoints to create the new gender inclusive options.

All 168 of the new emojis are available via the latest version of the Gboard keyboard.

Above: the three gender options for the 🧑‍🎤 Singer emoji in the March 2020 Pixel Feature Drop.

🆕 New

For the first time on Android, the new hair styles added in Emoji 11.0 have gender inclusive options.

Above: New gender-neutral emojis with various hair styles in Android 10.1. Image: Google / Emojipedia composite.

• 🧑‍🦰 Person: Red Hair
• 🧑‍🦱 Person: Curly Hair
• 🧑‍🦳 Person: White Hair
• 🧑‍🦲 Person: Bald

There are also three new non-gender-specific emojis using a 🦯 Probing Cane, 🦽 Manual Wheelchair, or 🦼 Motorized Wheelchair.

Above: New accessibility-focused gender neutral emojis. Image: Google / Emojipedia composite.

• 🧑‍🦯 Person With Probing Cane
• 🧑‍🦼 Person in Motorized Wheelchair
• 🧑‍🦽 Person in Manual Wheelchair

Also included in this 'feature drop' are 16 existing professions which now have gender neutral variants.

Above: New profession-based emojis without a gender specified. Image: Google / Emojipedia composite.

• 🧑‍⚕️ Health Worker
• 🧑‍🎓 Student
• 🧑‍🏫 Teacher
• 🧑‍⚖️ Judge
• 🧑‍🌾 Farmer
• 🧑‍🍳 Cook
• 🧑‍🔧 Mechanic
• 🧑‍🏭 Factory Worker
• 🧑‍💼 Office Worker
• 🧑‍🔬 Scientist
• 🧑‍💻 Technologist
• 🧑‍🎤 Singer
• 🧑‍🎨 Artist
• 🧑‍✈️ Pilot
• 🧑‍🚀 Astronaut
• 🧑‍🚒 Firefighter

Lastly, some new additions expand on the skin tone options for 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 People Holding Hands, 👭 Women Holding Hands, and 👬 Men Holding Hands.

As per Emoji 12.1 now the order of skin tones can also be chosen by the user.

For example 👩🏿‍🤝‍👩🏻 Women Holding Hands: Dark Skin Tone, Light Skin Tone was available last year, yet the opposite sequence of 👩🏻‍🤝‍👩🏿 Women Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone is new in this release.

Both feature a woman with dark skin tone and one with light skin tone, but the new sequence places each person on the opposite side.

Above: New combinations of 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 People Holding Hands, 👭 Women Holding Hands, and 👬 Men Holding Hands in Google's March 2020 Pixel Feature Drop. Image: Google / Emojipedia composite.

• 🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏼 People Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Medium-Light Skin Tone
• 🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏽 People Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Medium Skin Tone
• 🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏾 People Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Medium-Dark Skin Tone
• 🧑🏻‍🤝‍🧑🏿 People Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone
• 🧑🏼‍🤝‍🧑🏽 People Holding Hands: Medium-Light Skin Tone, Medium Skin Tone
• 🧑🏼‍🤝‍🧑🏾 People Holding Hands: Medium-Light Skin Tone, Medium-Dark Skin Tone
• 🧑🏼‍🤝‍🧑🏿 People Holding Hands: Medium-Light Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone
• 🧑🏽‍🤝‍🧑🏾 People Holding Hands: Medium Skin Tone, Medium-Dark Skin Tone
• 🧑🏽‍🤝‍🧑🏿 People Holding Hands: Medium Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone
• 🧑🏾‍🤝‍🧑🏿 People Holding Hands: Medium-Dark Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone
• 👩🏻‍🤝‍👩🏼 Women Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Medium-Light Skin Tone
• 👩🏻‍🤝‍👩🏽 Women Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Medium Skin Tone
• 👩🏻‍🤝‍👩🏾 Women Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Medium-Dark Skin Tone
• 👩🏻‍🤝‍👩🏿 Women Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone
• 👩🏼‍🤝‍👩🏽 Women Holding Hands: Medium-Light Skin Tone, Medium Skin Tone
• 👩🏼‍🤝‍👩🏾 Women Holding Hands: Medium-Light Skin Tone, Medium-Dark Skin Tone
• 👩🏼‍🤝‍👩🏿 Women Holding Hands: Medium-Light Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone
• 👩🏽‍🤝‍👩🏾 Women Holding Hands: Medium Skin Tone, Medium-Dark Skin Tone
• 👩🏽‍🤝‍👩🏿 Women Holding Hands: Medium Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone
• 👩🏾‍🤝‍👩🏿 Women Holding Hands: Medium-Dark Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone
• 👨🏻‍🤝‍👨🏼 Men Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Medium-Light Skin Tone
• 👨🏻‍🤝‍👨🏽 Men Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Medium Skin Tone
• 👨🏻‍🤝‍👨🏾 Men Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Medium-Dark Skin Tone
• 👨🏻‍🤝‍👨🏿 Men Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone
• 👨🏼‍🤝‍👨🏽 Men Holding Hands: Medium-Light Skin Tone, Medium Skin Tone
• 👨🏼‍🤝‍👨🏾 Men Holding Hands: Medium-Light Skin Tone, Medium-Dark Skin Tone
• 👨🏼‍🤝‍👨🏿 Men Holding Hands: Medium-Light Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone
• 👨🏽‍🤝‍👨🏾 Men Holding Hands: Medium Skin Tone, Medium-Dark Skin Tone
• 👨🏽‍🤝‍👨🏿 Men Holding Hands: Medium Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone
• 👨🏾‍🤝‍👨🏿 Men Holding Hands: Medium-Dark Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone

🆙 Changed

This latest emoji release from Google changes 18 previously-released emoji designs (108 when you include skin tone modifer variations).

👩‍⚕️ Woman Health Worker and 👨‍⚕️ Man Health Worker now each have a stethoscope with more distinct gray ear tips and bell.

👨‍🎤 Man Singer is now wearing teal instead of red, in keeping with Google's gender-based clothing colors for their people emoji designs.

👩‍🌾 Woman Farmer and 👨‍🌾 Man Farmer are now holding a pitchfork instead of an 🌾 Ear of Rice.^[2]

👩‍🔬 Woman Scientist and 👨‍🔬 Man Scientist are now holding a Erlenmeyer flask instead of a test tube.

📶 Release

Devices now receiving Google's March 2020 Pixel Feature Drop include Pixel 4, Pixel 4XL, Pixel 3, and Pixel 2.

It's not clear whether this emoji release schedule indicates a new path forward for Google: offering Pixel owners new emojis ahead of other non-Pixel Android phones. Or if this is simply an anomoly given the unusually timed Unicode Emoji 12.1 update in late 2019.

Some apps may support new emojis, even on older Android versions, if the app supports Google's EmojiCompat library.

A reminder: these updates do not apply to those with Samsung devices. Samsung has its own emoji set which is updated on a separate schedule to Google's Android emoji updates. Apps on Android such as WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook also use their own custom emoji implementations.

• [Every emoji in Android 10.0 March 2020 Feature Drop](https://emojipedia.org/google/android-10.0-march-2020-feature-drop /)
• [New emojis in Android 10.0 March 2020 Feature Drop](https://emojipedia.org/google/android-10.0-march-2020-feature-drop /new/)
• [Changed emojis in Android 10.0 March 2020 Feature Drop](https://emojipedia.org/google/android-10.0-march-2020-feature-drop /changed)
• Previous Android (10.0) Emoji Changelog

The Unicode Consortium has today released version 13 of the Unicode Standard. The release includes 55 new emoji characters and 5,875 non-emoji characters.

This follows last month's announcement of the final list of 117 new emojis for 2020, and paves the way for new emoji support to be added to major platforms throughout the year.

Emoji updates

A total of 55 new emoji code points are new in this release and include additions such as Smiling Face with Tear, People Hugging, Bubble Tea and Ninja.

These new characters can be seen in the relevant Unicode charts published on March 10, 2020:

The documentation for the Unicode Standard only provides glyphs in black and white, and by their nature, the color emoji implementations will vary from these designs.

New entries are shown in yellow and other additions include a plunger, fly, anatomical heart and blueberries.

The remaining 62 emojis (of the 117 announced) are sequences which combine multiple code points to display as a single emoji.

The distinction between a Unicode 13.0 and Emoji 13.0 is that latter includes sequences for gender, skin tone, and ZWJ Sequences where two emojis combine to make a single emoji, such as Polar Bear which is a combination of 🐻 Bear Face and ❄️ Snowflake.

Similarly, a new code point 🤌 U+1F90C PINCHED FINGERS has been added in Unicode 13.0, but the sequences for skin tone don't require unique code points, and are only found in Emoji 13.0.

Other sequences in Emoji 13.0 include:

• Black Cat: a combination of 🐈 Cat and ⬛ Black Large Square
• Transgender Flag: a combination of 🏳️ White Flag and ⚧️ Transgender Symbol
• Person Feeding Baby: a combination of 🧑 Person (or 👩 Woman or 👨 Man) and 🍼 Baby Bottle

These emoji sequences are not part of today's Unicode announcement, but will still arrive on major platforms at the same time as the emojis listed in Unicode 13.0.

Non-Emoji Updates

The majority of Unicode characters are not emojis, nor were emoji characters even part of the Unicode Standard until they were added for Japanese carrier compatibility in 2010.

Emoji updates are given priority here at Emojipedia, but its worth taking a moment to look at some of the other new characters approved in 2020.

Regarding this release, the Unicode Consortium notes:

“Unicode 13.0 adds 5,930 characters, for a total of 143,859 characters. These additions include 4 new scripts, for a total of 154 scripts, as well as 55 new emoji characters.”

To put it in perspective, the total number of emojis listed as RGI (Recommended for General Interchange) is 3,304, compared to over 143,859 characters now in the Unicode Standard.

Keep in mind that not every emoji has a unique Unicode code point, and not every Unicode character is an emoji. Here's how that relationship looks as of March 2020:

Symbols added in this release (which aren't implemented as emojis) include a Creative Commons symbol, as well as other related glyphs for non-commercial licences, or to indicate where attribution is required.

These new additions will help creators list appropriate licensing information in text form, in the same way that © ® and ™ can already be inserted within text, when (if?) they become supported by major vendors.

As these symnbols do not have emoji presentation, they will not appear on emoji keyboards.

A set of over 200 glyphs used in legacy computers such as the Apple II, Amstrad CPC and Commodore Amiga series have also been added to the Unicode Standard in this release.

These will permit emulators to correctly display text that would have appeared on computers in the 1970s and 1980s, if re-implemented in 2020. Many of these glyphs join in horizontal sequence to create larger shapes or symbols.

The Unicode Consortium has highlighted the following script and characters additions in this update:

Yezidi, historically used in Iraq and Georgia for liturgical purposes, with some modern revival of usage

Chorasmian, historically used in Central Asia across Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan to write an extinct Eastern Iranian language

Dives Akuru, historically used in the Maldives until the 20th century

Khitan Small Script, historically used in northern China

Arabic script additions used to write Hausa, Wolof, and other languages in Africa, and other additions used to write Hindko and Punjabi in Pakistan

A character fors Syloti Nagri in South Asia

Bopomofo additions used for Cantonese

Browse all the new characters here, with PDFs marking the new additions in yellow.

Emoji Release

The release of Unicode 13.0 does not mean users can access or use any new 2020 emoji.

What today's release from the Unicode Consortium does indicates is when major vendors such as Apple, Google or Samsung can implement these new emojis in their software.

If past years are indication, Twitter may be one of the first major vendors to release new emoji support in the coming months as part of its open source Twemoji project used on the Twitter website and Twitter app for Android.

Google brought new emoji support to Android in September of last year, and Apple to iOS and macOS in October. Given the regular release cycle for major operating systems such as Android and iOS, it's likely this schedule may be seen again in 2020.

Beta or developer previews usually precede operating system updates with new emojis by a few weeks or even months.

Resources

• Unicode 13.0.0 Details on Unicode.org
• Unicode 13.0 Emoji List (55 emoji code points) on Emojipedia
• Emoji 13.0 Emoji List (117 emojis) on Emojipedia
• Twitter Thread: Every New Emoji for 2020

The number one news story around the world right now is the spread of the latest strain of coronavirus, COVID-19.

While we don't have much to say about the spread of the virus itself – let's leave that to the experts – it is worth looking at how we discuss and respond to a threat like this online.

Assessing a set of twelve health-related emojis,^[1] we were first interested to see which most commonly correlate with discussion of Coronavirus or COVID.

• 😷 Face with Medical Mask
• 🤢 Nauseated Face
• 🤮 Face Vomiting
• 🤧 Sneezing Face
• 🤒 Face with Thermometer
• 🤕 Face with Head-Bandage
• 🚑 Ambulance
• 💊 Pill
• 💉 Syringe
• 🦠 Microbe
• 🧼 Soap
• 🧽 Sponge

These 12 emojis were used as the basis of our initial analysis, the results of which are shown below.

Figure 1: "Coronavirus" or "COVID" were the most popular uses of 😷 Face with Medical Mask and 🦠 Microbe in March 2020.

🤢 Methodology

A sample of 49,621 unique tweets which included at least one of the twelve selected emojis was collected between the 7th and 8th of March, 2020.

Filtering these tweets to the set that also made reference to either "Coronavirus" or "COVID" left us with a sample of 2,454 tweets (4.95% of our original sample).

Of the assessed tweets, use of 😷 Face with Medical Mask and 🦠 Microbe showed the higher percentage match, indicating that these emojis were most focussed on discussing Coronavirus or COVID, whereas the data suggests others were being used for a wider variety of topics.

Above: 😷 Face with Medical Mask as it appears on major platforms.

This analysis suggests that at the present time, 😷 Face with Medical Mask and 🦠 Microbe may be the best emojis to use if looking to reference or describe coronavirus in using an emoji.

What this analysis doesn't tell us is which emojis are most used when assessing all Coronavirus-related tweets. For that, we conducted a separate anlysis.

😷 Tweets About Coronavirus

Emojipedia collected and analysed over 200,000 tweets across multiple languages which referenced either "Coronavirus" or "COVID-19", in order to determine which emojis are most popular in discussions of this topic.

With this information, we may be able to perform basic sentiment analysis based on which emojis show prominently, or to determine how information about coronavirus is conveyed.

The chart below displays the emojis most frequently found within coronavirus-related tweets.

Figure 2: Emojis most commonly included in tweets containing "Coronavirus", "COVID-19" or "COVID19".

This data was taken from a sample of 205,576 unique tweets collected by Emojipedia on the 7th and 8th of March 2020.

Topping the charts are two laughing emojis, the medical mask, a thinking face, and the aforementioned microbe emoji.

Further down the list is an eye-rolling emoji, a warning symbol, and folded hands most commonly used for prayer, but also used as a gesture of thanks.

1. 😂 Face with Tears of Joy
2. 🤣 Rolling on the Floor Laughing
3. 😷 Face with Medical Mask
4. 🤔 Thinking Face
5. 🦠 Microbe
6. 🔴 Red Circle
7. 😭 Loudly Crying Face
8. 🙄 Face with Rolling Eyes
9. 👇 Backhand Index Pointing Down
10. 😳 Flushed Face
11. 🚨 Police Car Light
12. ⚠️ Warning
13. 🇮🇹 Flag: Italy
14. 😱 Face Screaming in Fear
15. 🙏 Folded Hands

While the presence of 😂 Face with Tears of Joy and 🤣 Rolling on the Floor Laughing at the top of the list may appear confusing, these two emojis are consistently some of the most used on Twitter.

The prominence of laughing emojis in coronavirus-related discussions could indicate any number of possibilities:

a. Tweets about coronavirus are no different to broader Twitter discussions, of which laughing emojis are consistently popular
b. People are specifically joking and making light of coronavirus-related news
c. A combination of the above, or other factors

To determine whether these results were being skewed by overall popularity of some emojis – and specifically the dominance of 😂 Face with Tears of Joy in online discussions, we collected a third sample as a control.

Analyzing 132,702 unique tweets from a non-topic-specific sample^[2] taken on the 8th and 9th of March 2020, we compared the relatively difference in popularity experienced by our top 15 in the "COVID" sample to their popularity in the general sample. The table below outlines the difference in their rankings between these sets.

Above: a table^[3] comparing the ranking of the top 15 emojis in our COVID sample of 205,576 tweets with the same emojis' rankings in a general sample of 132,702 tweets.

This comparison shows considerable increases, as expected, for emojis which aren't usually anywhere near as popular as 😂 Face with Tears of Joy.

Of the increases we see 😷 Face with Medical Mask (+ 100 places in popularity between the samples) 🦠 Microbe (+133), as well as eye-catching "warning" emojis such as 🔴 Red Circle (+64), 🚨 Police Car Light (+102), and ⚠️ Warning (+122).

Figure 3: a graph comparing the ranking of the top 15 emojis in our COVID sample of 205,576 tweets with the same emojis' rankings in a general sample of 132,702 tweets.

Additionally, the presence of 🇮🇹 Flag: Italy coincides with news of a regional quarantine in northern Italy^[4]. The top five flag emojis located in our sample of 205,576 tweets are as follows:

Figure 4: Top flag emojis in tweets containing the term "Coronavirus", "COVID-19", or "COVID19".

1. 🇮🇹 Flag: Italy
2. 🇨🇳 Flag: China
3. 🇺🇸 Flag: United States
4. 🇫🇷 Flag: France
5. 🇪🇸 Flag: Spain

📈 The Recent Rise

The prominence of both 😷 Face with Medical Mask and 🦠 Microbe in both of our Twitter samples was also echoed in our analysis of Emojipedia user behaviour over the last eight months.

We reviewed Emojipedia page view data from July 2019, specifically investigating trend data for 😷 Face with Medical Mask, 🦠 Microbe, and 🤕 Face with Head-Bandage.

🤕 Face with Head-Bandage was selected for inclusion as it previously correlated closely with 😷 Face with Medical Mask prior to the spread of COVID-19 in 2020.

Figure 5: Comparison of 😷 Face with Medical Mask, 🦠 Microbe, and 🤕 Face with Head-Bandage since July 2019, using Emojipedia page view data.

Both 😷 Face with Medical Mask and 🦠 Microbe diverge dramatically from 🤕 Face with Head-Bandage at the tail end of January 2020.

For 🦠 Microbe in particular, this is the most popular the emoji has been on Emojipedia since its approval in 2018.

Whether the various depictions of this emoji have influenced its use it hard to say. What appears to be a virus on Apple platforms appears more like bacteria on other apps and operating systems.

Above: 🦠 Microbe as it appears on various platforms.

💬 Related Terms

Lastly, we ran an analysis on the words most commonly used alongside 😷 Face with Medical Mask and 🦠 Microbe on Twitter.

These illustrations sampled 49,621 English-language tweets. 5,931 were analyzed where at least one 😷 Face with Medical Mask emoji was included and 2,512 tweets included at least one 🦠 Microbe emoji.

Above: Words in English-language tweets including 😷 Face with Medical Mask.

Above: Words in English-language tweets including 🦠 Microbe.

Variations of "coronavirus" and "COVID-19" appear prominently alongside both 😷 Face with Medical Mask and 🦠 Microbe, once again clearly indicating that these two emojis are now primarily being used to discuss COVID-19 and its spread across the world.

The fact that so few other topics are discussed using these emojis indicates that, at least at the time of writing, these are the coronavirus emojis as far as the general public is concerned.

The Unicode Consortium is delaying Unicode 14.0 by six months due to COVID-19.  This means that emojis that would have arrived on phones in 2021 will instead roll out in 2022.

Does this mean 2021 will be an emoji-free year, and what does it mean for the emojis already announced? Here's a brief FAQ.

🐢 What's the delay?

Announced by Unicode on April 8, 2020, the annual release of the Unicode Standard is being delayed by six months.

🗓 What is the usual schedule?

The regular Unicode release schedule has looked like this for a number of years:

• 📝 Unicode release: March–June
• 📲 Major operating system support: August–December

Versions 9, 10 and 11 of the Unicode Standard came out in June of 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively.

This schedule was changed to a March release as of Unicode 12.0 in March 2019, to allow major vendors such as Google and Apple time to include the new emojis in their major software updates (which fall in the second half of the year).

Unicode 13.0 was released in March 2020, with the new emojis in the update announced in late January 2020.

🆕 What is the new schedule?

Unicode 14.0 would have been released in March 2021 under normal circumstances. This would have resulted in the new emojis for that release coming to iOS, macOS, Android and Windows in the second half of 2021.

Unicode 14.0 is now planned for September 2021, meaning major operating systems wouldn't have a chance to include these updates until very late 2021, or more likely, the first half of 2022.

What new emojis have been bumped?

No decisions about the final emoji list for 2021 had been made at this stage. Provisional Emoji Candidates originally slated for 2021 include Vulture, Bubbles, Hand With Index Finger and Thumb Crossed (aka finger heart), and Crow.

If approved in the final release of Emoji 14.0, these will be subject to the announced delay - only coming to phones in 2022.

What about the 117 new emojis approved for this year?

Unicode 13.0 (and Emoji 13.0 - the adjacent release which includes new emojis, and relies on Unicode 13.0 code points) is still coming to devices this year as planned.

There is no indication that 2020 will be any different to 2019 from an emoji rollout perspective.

As an estimate, users can expect the 117 new emojis for 2020 to come to devices:

• 📲 Android: September 2020*
• 📲 iOS: October 2020
• 📲 Samsung: November 2020

*Some Android devices get updates slower than others, or not at all. Some Android apps support new emojis, even on old Android releases.

Does that mean no new emojis in 2021?

There is a chance there will be no new emojis on phones in 2021.

Alternatively, Unicode has suggested a Emoji 13.1 release which could fill the gap in 2021. This wouldn't be able to include new Unicode characters (which need a full Unicode release), but could include sequences.

Emojis added without requiring new code points in the past have included:

• 🏳️‍🌈 Rainbow Flag ( 🏳 + 🌈 )
• 🐕‍🦺 Service Dog (🐕 + 🦺 )
• 🐻‍❄️ Polar Bear (🐻 + ❄️) – coming in 2020
• 🧑‍🍼 Person Feeding Baby (🧑 + 🍼 ) – coming in 2020

Should an Emoji 13.1 release come out in place of Emoji 14.0, this could be comprised of sequences like these, and/or gender and skin tone variations of existing emojis.

No decision has been made about a potential Emoji 13.1 release for 2021 yet, with the Unicode Emoji Subcomittee and the Unicode Technical Committee to determine this in the coming weeks or months.

Much of that decision is likely to be around whether there are sufficient emoji sequences approved to justify a new emoji update, when no new code points can be included.

(Disclaimer: I represent Emojipedia on the Unicode Technical Committee, and am a member and former vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee.)

TL;DR please

• 2020: New emojis coming to devices, as already announced. No change.
• 2021: Potentially a smaller set of new emojis coming to devices. Or no new emojis on devices at all.
• 2022: New emojis coming to devices, planning still underway. Unicode 14.0 not due until late 2021, so unlikely to see new emojis on any device until 2022.
• 2023: It's unclear so far how this will impact the schedule for Unicode 15.0 and Emoji 15.0.

When Jameela Jamil posted a tweet with a single ‘shocked face’ emoji last week, she didn't expect to see blowback. Much to Jamil's confusion, many responses felt the (since-deleted) single-emoji-tweet was inconsiderate, or mocking in tone.

• "This is in such poor taste"
• "it’s not a cute look to be a rich celeb using your platform for ridicule. Thought you were better than that"
• "people just out there doin they best"

Confused, Jamil responded:

“My emoji is my shock that this is what people are having to resort to. I didn’t remotely engage in the picking of the fighter or laugh at anyone. You are angry and scared and I understand that... but the responses of this read a lot into this. Let’s ask and then rage.”

It soon became clear what was going on.

The emoji Jamil had used – 🤭 Face with Hand Over Mouth – looks subtly different on her iPhone compared to those using the Twitter website.

Soon, Jamil's followers pointed her to Emojipedia to see the various designs of this emoji on different platforms.

Solving Emoji Miscommunication

Twitter's metadata for each tweet is a big help when tracking down emoji confusion.

Each tweet shows the client (app) used to post it, which can be used to determine that Jamil's tweet was from an iPhone, where 🤭 Face with Hand Over Mouth appears as a gasping or shocked emoji. Jamil discovering the issue:

“Ah some people say it shows up on their phone as a Laughing emoji. It isn’t on my phone. It’s the hand covering mouth emoji in shock. This explains the rage. What a fucker.”

The same emoji when viewed on the Twitter website on a Windows PC or Mac shows Twitter's own emoji design, which shows a stifled laugh - the more common depiction of this emoji.

This emoji is scheduled for a fix in 2022, with the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee proposing a new emoji for the serious / shocked face with one hand covering the mouth. This would pave the way for vendors - mostly Apple here - to unify the existing emoji as stifling a laugh.

(Disclaimer: I am member and former vice chair of this committee)

With many people working from home and communicating remotely with friends, family and coworkers, it's only natural that miscommunications will arise. Especially, but not exclusively, when an emoji conveys different ideas on multiple platforms.

Emojipedia Lookups are...up

In April 2020, Emojipedia is on track to serve over 50 million pages of emoji information. This compares to a usual period which sees around 35 million page views each month.

Intentions vary, but reasons users visit Emojipedia can be to:

• 📙 look up what an emoji is intended to mean
• ✌️ learn how people actually use an emoji
• 📋 copy and paste an emoji
• 🔍 see each emoji in more detail at larger sizes
• 🔄 compare how an emoji looks cross-platform
• 📜 find out what an emoji used to look like

It's possible that a combination of all of above is driving the increased demand for Emojipedia in a time where we are communicating remotely more than ever.

More Miscommunication

Jameela Jamil isn't the only one getting caught out with an emoji that isn't interpreted how she expected.

Jessica Chastain, when discovering her Samsung phone showed an emoji unlike any other, tweeted:

“Now I look like a pervert”

Why? In old versions of Samsung's phone software, 🤤 Drooling Face looked more like the wide-eyed 😳 Flushed Face than what many platforms currently show.

Chastain, using a Samsung phone, wouldn't have been aware that what she sent as shock, was showing as drooling for others.

It's not that Samsung's emoji wasn't drooling, but it wasn't drooling enough.

Similarly in 2017 beloved children's character Cookie Monster discovered that the delicious chocolate chip cookies he had been sending in emoji form didn't appear that way for everyone:

There's also the challenge of when the emojis are too damn small, as experienced recently by Brenda Boyd sending her local council a 🖕 Middle Finger when intending to send a 👍 Thumbs Up, much to her embarassment.

Those working from home or keeping in touch with family, or simply commenting on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter or Facebook might want to keep a few of these emoji mismatches in mind.

🥺 Pleading Face

For relative emoji newcomer 🥺 Pleading Face, approved in 2018, the difference between how this pleads when used in Twitter for iOS vs Twitter for web is quite distinct:

While many emojis have converged on similar appearances in recent years, many remain quite distinct.

It may not matter if the ribbon on each 👒 Woman’s Hat has a different color, but a face like this is a different story.

🥴 Woozy Face

Another recent emoji to watch is 🥴 Woozy Face, also known by its longer name Face with Uneven Eyes and Wavy Mouth. All companies arguably do follow the Unicode character name, but the mood varies considerably. Google, WhatsApp and Facebook have a distinctly intoxicated face, while Twitter appears somewhat lovestruck.

Apple's version of 🥴 Woozy Face - an instant hit on the web – is far more ambiguous in appearance. For better or worse.

So for this emoji in particular, if ambiguity is what you're aiming for, be aware you might end up with something more specific on other operating systems, and even changing in many apps if using Android.

😵 Dizzy Face

Another face to see two divergent paths in recent years has been what Unicode calls the 😵 Dizzy Face.

This emoji dates back to the earliest emoji sets in Japan, where it was shown as a face with both eyes shown as X shapes. A similar design was found on both Docomo (then styled NTT DoCoMo) and au by KDDI.

The trouble with an emoji like Dizzy Face is that the name doesn't really correlate with what many consider to be a dizzy face. Documentation from 2008 lists Dizzy Face as the name for this emoji, used when standardizing the Japanese emoji set into the Unicode Standard.

Given the original emojis were added to Unicode for compatibility with Japan, one goal has generally been to keep these designs similar to their original encoding. Not that there haven't been deviations over the years.

In much of the world, a face that looks like "dizzy face" on most platforms (with X for eyes) would be considered a dead face. Eek 😬

So what does it look like on major platforms now, and then?

Emojipedia flags this emoji in particular, to let users know that if you intended to show "spiral eyes", you'll only find that on two major platforms.

For this specific case, the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee is proposing a fix, by introducing a new emoji for “Face With X Eyes”, which if approved, would mean all existing versions of the Dizzy Face emoji would be replaced with spiral eyes.

An alternative approach that I endorse is to keep the existing Dizzy Face emoji with X-eyes (retaining backward-compatibility) and introducing a new emoji: Face With Spiral Eyes to fill the gap.

This latter option, if taken up, could involve renaming the current Dizzy Face to Face With X Eyes for consistency, and to take the subjective nature out of the name.

👯 Bunny Ears

A similar divergence issue has been resolved in recent years, whereby 👯 People with Bunny Ears showed two people on some platforms, and one person on others.

This was a result of two distinct emojis in Japan being merged into a single emoji codepoint in Unicode. Instead of having both, vendors simply converged on the two-person design, eventually.

In an odd way, this is likely the least of people's concern, as the vibe remains the same between different versions, even when the depiction is quite different. The concern remains mostly on specific facial expressions, which cause the most emoji grief.

Is emoji use up or down? Any other changes?

In the coming weeks we will be looking at broader questions of emoji use, and how it is changing at a time where the whole world feels like it has turned upside down.

We've been fielding many questions about whether we are using emojis differently in this work-from-home era, and hope to answer as many as we can once we finish crunching the data.

In the meantime, you might be interested in our recent analysis of which emojis are used in tweets about COVID-19:

Yesterday Twitter begun rollout of a new emoji update: Twemoji 12.1.16. While it doesn't include any new emojis, the update does include subtle changes to 33 previously released emoji designs.

Above: a selection of the updated emoji designs in Twemoji 12.1.16.

As Twemoji 12.1.16 does not include any new emojis, Twitter users will have to continue to wait for Emoji 13.0's Smiling Face with Tear, Pinched Fingers, and People Hugging emojis to arrive on the platform in the coming weeks or months.

🆙 Changes

🤯 Exploding Head's cranial eruption has been changed to have a more neutral color.

💪 Flexed Biceps has additional detail in the clenched fist.

🧩 Puzzle Piece is now green instead of blue.^[1]

💵 Dollar Banknote has been given more dimensionality and detail.

Similar changes were made for the other banknote emojis (i.e 💶 Euro Banknote, 💴 Yen Banknote, and 💷 Pound Banknote), as well as the 💸 Money with Wings emoji.

🗡️ Dagger has been given an ornamental gold hilt and is now pointing downwards as per other major vendors' designs.

⏸️ Unchanged

As was the case in Twemoji 12.1.15, the 💑 Couple With Heart emoji continues to show a woman and man.

This stands out compared to other vendor's recent design changes to depict a gender inclusive design, despite Twitter making similar changes across its set in Twemoji 12.1.14.

📶 Release

Rollout of Twemoji 12.1.6 began yesterday across Twitter's various platforms. Twemoji 12.1.6 support will progressively roll out for all users of the Twitter website, the Twitter mobile site, Tweetdeck, and Twitter for Android.

Some users of the Twitter website will see Twemoji 12.1.6 before others. This may be due to a recent change made by Twitter where emoji images are now embedded as as scalable vector graphic files (SVG) in some browsers, instead of PNG files which only displayed at a single resolution.

Above: two browsers currently showing old and new sets. Left: Google Chrome version 81.0.4044.113, Right: Internet Explorer version 11.0.185.

Twemoji 12.1.6 is likely to be made available via the Open Source Twemoji Repository in the near future.

Users of the iOS Twitter app will continue to see Apple emoji designs, as Twitter for iOS uses to the native system designs for emoji support.

• View all Twemoji emojis
• View every changed emoji in Twemoji 12.1.6

In just two short years one emoji has captured our imaginations like no other.

Of every 100 tweets sent in April 2020, one of them contained a relative-newcomer on the emoji scene: 🥺 Pleading Face.

A recent Emojipedia analysis of 68 million tweets saw no Covid slowdown on the ever-increasing use of 🥺, with tweets containing this emoji increasing considerably from mid 2019 to early 2020 and showing no signs of stopping.

This emoji is now the third most used emoji on Twitter.

😂 Face with Tears of Joy remains the most used emoji on Twitter, as well as pretty much all social and messaging platforms now, and over the past six years.

The much younger and wider-eyed Pleading Face could topple the divisive laughing-crying emoji as soon as next year if current trends continue.

Pleading Face was used in 0.98% (just under 1%) of all tweets analyzed by Emojipedia in a 10 day window of April 2020. That figure isn't just for tweets that include at least one emoji, it is across all tweets. i.e. across a random sample of 100 tweets on Twitter, on average one (0.98%) will include this emoji: 🥺

By comparison, another emoji approved as part of the same Emoji 11.0 release is 🥰 Smiling Face with Hearts. This loving face had a similar start to Pleading Face in 2018 but has since plateaued and in April 2020 appeared in under half of one percent (0.40%) of all tweets.

While we are here it's also worth calling out 😭 Loudly Crying Face which is also increasing in use, against the somewhat stagnant 😂 Face with Tears of Joy. A testament to the wide range of uses 😭 can stand for.

🥺 Pleading Face? I don't know her.

Approved in early 2018 and only becoming available on a majority of phones in late 2018, this is a sharp rise in use for such a newcomer.

Pleading Face is so new that many phones purchased just a few years ago won't even have access to this emoji.

Yet here we are in 2020 readying the throne for our new emoji king.

The entry for Pleading Face on Emojipedia reads:

A yellow face with furrowed eyebrows, a small frown, and large, “puppy dog” eyes, as if begging or pleading. May also represent adoration or feeling touched by a loving gesture.

What is the allure of this face? A few points come to mind:

• Overtly expressive emojis are popular. Like GIFs that often over-react to a situation for comedic or emotional effect, emojis can fill a similar role.
• Pleading Face also fills an ambiguity gap. Is it shy? Sad? Sorry? Flirty? All of the above. If you want to be flirty but with plausible deniability, this is the one for you.
• Pair 🥺 with 👉👈 and you have an absolute hit, as very often seen alongside comments on TikTok “won't simp, must not simp 🥺👉👈”

Here's our pal Lil Nas X with a text-based meme circulating on Twitter earlier in the year, also combining 🥺 with 👉👈:

People love Pleading Face. It is cute, flexible, and seems to convey a vibe quite distinct from other emojis.

Which leaves one remaining question.

👉👈 But is it Horny?

Is a final explanation for the rise of this emoji that everyone is getting horny on main? Follow Emojipedia After Dark and you might be forgiven for thinking so. You might also notice the frequency in which 🥺 pops up in NSFW tweets.

While Pleading Face is somewhat suggestive, any emoji can be horny if you try hard enough. And people sure are trying.

A sentiment analysis performed by Emojipedia finds that positive emoji use is on the decrease, while the total number of emojis sent in our communications continues to rise.

Analyzing 68 million unique tweets, a number of patterns have emerged which go some way toward reflecting the global mood and how we communicate in the “new normal” of 2020.

😄😫📊 Emoji Sentiment

By grouping “smiley” emojis – generally classed as the non-human yellow balls of emotion – into positive and negative categories, we can assess various sentiment trends on Twitter.

Of all the available emojis, smileys tend to be most used to convey emotion, and are most useful for this style of sentiment analysis. They're also the most popular type of emoji sent, according to Unicode statistics.

Isolating instances^[1] of smileys and charting the relative size of their emotional polarity ("Positive", "Negative" or "Other/Ambiguous")^[2] allows a look at emotional trends on Twitter, when it comes to emoji use.

Charted below are these three groups of smileys, shown as a percentage of all individual emoji instances during four selected time frames between August 2018 and April 2020.^[3].

Above: The relative use of positive emojis is down, while negative emojis have seen a slight increase.

Between August 2019 and April 2020 the percentage of all individual positive smiley instances decreased from 29.92% to 28.12% - a relative decrease of 5.63%.

What this data also shows is that positive expressions remain the most popular type of smiley. These never dropped below 28% of all emoji instances throughout the period measured.

While it's impossible to determine all reasons behind any sentiment shift, this change could be a result of fewer positive tweets due to the current global pandemic, especially as the largest relative drop was seen in the most recent period.

There is a considerable jump in the number of "Other/Ambiguous" instances, which is accounted for by rapid ascent of the popular and variable 🥺 Pleading Face. This relative newcomer has ended up as the third most popular emoji on Twitter.

Relative to all smileys sent, negative emoji use continues to show a steady climb year-on-year. This a trend which continues year on year.

🔝🔟 Top Ten Emojis

A total of thirteen different emojis appeared at least once in the analysis of the top ten emojis found over the four timeframes assessed.

This shows a relatively stable level of popularity for those emojis most often used by Twitter users. People are known to be creatures of habit after all.

The top thirteen emojis, ordered by their relative rank in our sample from April 2020^[4]:

1. 😂 Face with Tears of Joy
2. 😭 Loudly Crying Face
3. 🥺 Pleading Face
4. 🤣 Rolling on the Floor Laughing
5. ❤️ Red Heart
6. ✨ Sparkles
7. 😍 Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes
8. 🙏 Folded Hands
9. 😊 Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes
10. 🥰 Smiling Face with Hearts
11. 👍 Thumbs Up
12. 💕 Two Hearts
13. 🤔 Thinking Face

Across all four time frames, the 😂 Face with Tears of Joy was firmly in first place, followed somewhat distantly by the 😭 Loudly Crying Face.

Movement among 😍 Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes, 😊 Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes and 🥰 Smiling Face with Hearts seen in April 2020 is of note: each express affection, so it is possible the relatively new 🥰 Smiling Face with Hearts is appearing in tweets where either 😍 Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes, 😊 Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes would have previously appeared.

Note that in the chart above we describe the percentages for each emoji in each time frame^[5] as "Emoji %". This is the percentage of tweets featuring at least one emoji that the specific emoji appeared in.

🙏 Folded Hands saw nearly a 25% increase between August 2019 and April 2020, which could be related to our current circumstances. No it's not a high-five.

Above: Use of 🙏 Folded Hands has increased.

📈📉📈 Total Emoji Usage

A common question right now is whether our global shift to working-from-home has resulted in more emoji use. Emojipedia itself has seen high growth recently, but does that mean more emojis are being used overall?

Based on our analysis of 68 million tweets, the answer is a resounding yes: emoji use is up. The most recent period assessed shows nearly one in five (19.04%) of tweets contains at least one emoji.

Emoji usage has increased from 17.74% of all tweets to 19.04% between August 2019 and April 2020 (a relative increase of 7.1%).

This follows an increase from 14.9% to 17% between August 2018 and April 2019, a relative increase of 14.1%. So while emoji use continues to grow, this is a trend that has been taking place for quite some time now.

A wider analysis of emoji growth trends would need to be conducted to make a more substantive claim about whether Coronavirus has impacted growth, either positively or negatively.

😃🐻🍔 Emoji Categories

Are the types of emojis we are sending changing, and if so: how?

Competing mobile phone and app platforms categorize emojis in different ways. Emojipedia lists emojis in these eight groups:

• 😃 Smileys & People
• 🐻 Animals & Nature
• 🍔 Food & Drink
• ⚽ Activity
• 🌇 Travel & Places
• 💡 Objects
• 🔣 Symbols (which include the various hearts)
• 🎌 Flags

When assessing the relative popularity of each group, smileys and people make up such a high percentage, it's difficult to even make out some of the lesser-used groups.

Shown below are the top three categories of 😃 Smileys & People, 🐻 Animals & Nature and 🔣 Symbols.

All other categories have been combined into a single group for legibility.

😃 Smileys & People assumes the lion's share of emoji instances, never dropping below 60%.

In distant second is the 🔣 Symbols category, which is dominanted by the various heart emojis. This is continues to trend down, possibly due to new smileys that include hearts.

Third place shows 🐻 Animals & Nature category, relatively stable.

All other categories collectively accounted for no more than 7.92% of all emoji use.

To better observe trends in the smaller categories, the top three categories have been removed from the chart below.

While the variations in these categories do largely appear to be following an expected pattern of ebb and flow, the relative decline of the 🌇 Travel & Places category of 27.28% between August 2019 and April 2020 seems initially interesting as a potential response to the travel restrictions of 2020 in many countries around the world.

However, one should also note the 20% decrease in this category between August 2018 and April 2019: could this be a seasonal effect for travel emojis between Summer and Spring in the northern hemisphere? A closer analysis would have to be taken to determine the month-by-month trends here.

What is shown is that this year's drop in travel-related emojis is more pronounced than the same decrease in 2018-2019.

🆕📈 Emoji Winners

Looking deep into the wider emoji set: which emojis saw large increases or decreases in their use of late?

Often the lesser-used emojis can be missed in charts of most popular emojis, but that doesn't mean there aren't trends to be found.

We peformed this analysis by assessing the relative increase in usage between August 2018 and April 2019, excluding any emoji that did not have over 1,000 instances of use in April 2020.^[6]

These are the emojis which saw the greatest relative increases in the past nine months:

1. 🤍 White Heart
2. 🥱 Yawning Face
3. 🛒 Shopping Cart
4. 🦠 Microbe
5. 🐳 Spouting Whale
6. ㊙️ Japanese “Secret” Button
7. 👈 Backhand Index Pointing Left
8. 💰 Money Bag
9. ⚡ High Voltage
10. 🥇 1st Place Medal

Both 🤍 White Heart and 🥱 Yawning Face were introduced in 2019 via Emoji 12.0 and introduced to Twitter users on browsers in April 2019.

Despite this, its usage in August of 2019 was quite minor. However, following the introduction of both 🤍 White Heart and 🥱 Yawning Face to Samsung and Apple devices at the end of August and October respectively, these emojis experience a meteoric relative rise in usage in terms of their overall share of tweets featuring at least one emoji.

The increase in 🛒 Shopping Cart is of interest considering the widely-reported instances of crowded supermarkets that occurred across much of the world in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

Fourth in the list of emojis which have seen the most growth in this period is the 🦠 Microbe which appeared in our initial COVID-19 emoji analysis last month.

That analysis showed increases for both 🦠 Microbe and 😷 Face with Medical Mask, echoed here in this analysis. 😷 Face with Medical Mask was the #11 in the most significant increase seen on an individual emoji, so just missed the cut in this chart.

The relative change in use of each emoji is shown below.

🆕📉 Emoji Losers

Finally, which emojis are decreasing in popularity in recent times?

Looking at emojis with over 1,000 usage instances that experienced the largest relative decrease in use shows a mixed bunch.

The emojis which dropped in use the most significantly from August 2019 to April 2020 are:

1. ☔️ Umbrella with Rain Drops
2. 🔵 Blue Circle
3. ⚽ Soccer Ball
4. 🇮🇳 Flag: India
5. ➰ Curly Loop
6. ✈️ Airplane
7. ⚪ White Circle
8. 🌀 Cyclone
9. 🌴 Palm Tree
10. ⚾ Baseball

The reason for ☔️ Umbrella with Rain Drops or 🔵 Blue Circle losing so much ground is not clear, but the suspension of many professional sports in 2020 could be behind the dropping ⚽ Soccer Ball, ⚾ Baseball.

✈️ Airplane has seen its use halve in the period assessed, though some of that change will be due to seasonal factors noted in our category analysis.

🇮🇳 Flag: India dropping in use can be explained by Independence Day in India being held during one of the assessed periods, but not the other.

➰ Curly Loop would require additional analysis to determine if there were social campaigns or alternative uses of this emoji which may have led to its decline.

The relative change in use of each emoji is shown below.

🤓 Summary

Following an analysis of over 68 million tweets across four time periods in 2018, 2019 and 2020, we made the following findings:

• ☺️📉 The relative use of positive smiley face emojis is on the decline (down 5.63%).
• 🥺⏫ Pleading Face is experiencing surging popularity.
• 📊📈 The top ten emojis used on Twitter are relatively stable
• 🔝😂 Face with Tears of Joy remains the most used emoji on Twitter.
• 💕🆙 Emoji use as a whole continues to rise, with nearly one in five tweets now containing at least one emoji
• 🤔🦠 The increase in emoji use has been potentially slowed by our new normal, but its too soon to say this with certainty.
• 😃👍 Smileys & People still dominate in terms popular emoji categories, while 🔣 Symbols are on the decline.
• ✈️⤵️ Emojis in the Travel & Places category have seen larger than usual decreases recently, possibly due to travel restrictions.

As with any data, many of these figures can be read in different ways. It's clear in the real world that our new normal is continually changing.

If, how and when the changing planet affects our digital communications is something that remains interesting to watch. Whether we use our digital lives to reflect our real lives, or as an escape from them may also vary by individual, and social media platform.

The insights shared here are using Twitter data due to the public nature of the platform, so are inherently unable to determine whether private messaging conversations have seen similar shifts.

There are indications here that positive emoji use remains high despite the difficulties faced by many. Regardless of how you express yourself online, take care out there 💕

📖 Further Reading

• 🆕 117 New Emojis In Final List For 2020
• 🐢 What the 2021 Unicode Delay Means for Emoji Updates
• 📙 Emojipedia Lookups At All Time High
• 🥺 A New King: Pleading Face
• 😷 Spread of the Coronavirus Emoji
• 🦠 Coronavirus Emoji List

What does equality look like on the emoji keyboard?

Much progress has been made in recent years, with emojis that were once white and male^[1] now offering a choice of skin tones and equal gender options.

Last year 100 new emojis were released to support combinations of people holding hands, with each allowing a different skin tone.

Above: Holding-hands emojis gained skin tone support in 2019. Images L–R: Apple, Google, Samsung / Emojipedia composite.

But what about the families? 26 family units now sit on the emoji keyboard, and to the increasing confusion of users, none permit a change of skin tone on most platforms.

👪👨‍👩‍👦👨‍👩‍👧👨‍👦‍👦👨‍👩‍👧‍👧👩‍👩‍👧‍👧👨‍👨‍👧‍👦👨‍👦👨‍👧👩‍👧‍👦👨‍👨‍👦‍👦👨‍👨‍👦👩‍👧‍👧👨‍👩‍👧‍👦👨‍👨‍👧👩‍👩‍👧‍👦👩‍👩‍👦👨‍👩‍👦‍👦👩‍👩‍👦‍👦👩‍👦‍👦👨‍👧‍👦👩‍👦👨‍👧‍👧👩‍👧👨‍👨‍👧‍👧

A report published by the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee^[2] for last week's Unicode Technical Committee meeting reviewed all the possible options to expand skin tone support for families.

The finding of the report was that the status quo remains the preferred option.

That is: no new family emojis for the forseeable future.^[3]

Above: Unicode has decided against skin tone support for family emojis. Image: Emojipedia mockup based on Apple designs.

What is the problem?

Families are currently shown on most major platforms as default yellow.^[4] This color is intended to represent a non-human skin tone. The families aren't white, nor are they black. At least that is the intention.

Black Families have been a consistent request from Emojipedia users for a number of years, and a casual glance at Twitter shows this is consistently viewed as an oversight.

It seemed only reasonable that people might have assumed black or mixed families could be up next. After all, nearly every other emoji with a default yellow skin tone now supports all five skin tone modifiers permitted in the Unicode Standard.^[5]

Required viewing: @aparnapkin's emoji standup.

"Why does Emoji Corp think it's so much more important to represent a multicultural boy band 👱‍♂️👱🏻‍♂️👱🏼‍♂️👱🏽‍♂️👱🏾‍♂️👱🏿‍♂️ than a beautiful, diverse family?" pic.twitter.com/OPgxWTquTo

— Jane Solomon (@janesolomon) March 27, 2018

A recent study from Alexander Robertson, Walid Magdy, Sharon Goldwater of Edinburgh University found that people with light skin are more likely to use the default (yellow) skin tone than any other group.

Meanwhile in the same study:

“a higher proportion of dark-skinned users use skin tone modifiers and they use them more frequently”

There can be many layers to how an emoji can be used and for what purpose, but it is quite apparent that white families can more easily use default yellow emojis for self representation compared to black families.

Above: Which family is better represented by a default yellow family emoji? Image: iStockphoto photos, Apple emoji designs, Emojipedia composite.

The options

Seven unique options were looked at by Unicode when it came to the challenge of adding skin tones to families.

One option assessed was to support modifier options for each family member, allowing any mix of skin tones. This was part of a proposal from 2019, which outlined the 7,230 new emojis required to allow families to have the same flexibility afforded to the couples holding hands.

Above: Apple's emoji picker with the multi-skin-tone selector added in 2019.

Another possibility is to limit the choice to only three of the five skin tone options for each family member. Or to allow only one family to gain mixed skin tone support (e.g. allowing 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Family: Man, Woman, Girl, Boy to have skin tone options) with the others remaining as-is.

The current view from the report is that these all are unsuitable options, for different reasons.

The former was declined for technical reasons (over 7,000 new emojis would truly be strain for some platforms to handle, especially when supporting older devices), and the latter for pragmatic reasons (if you only add some skin tones or some families, the exclusion only shifts around).

Microsoft in 2016 did add every single family combination, as a possibility in Windows 10, helped by the vector emoji font Segoe Color Emoji.^[6]

Something simpler

An option raised in the Unicode report is the idea of a consistent "uniform" skin tone, where each family member would be implemented with the same skin tone as the others.

This option would only require 135 new emojis. With over 7,000 emojis needed for mixed skin tone support, 135 seems a positively tiny set of additions by comparison.

Above: Mockup of an iOS emoji keyboard if Uniform skin tones were implemented. Image: Emojipedia mockup based on Apple designs.

The report from Unicode declines the Uniform Skin Tone option in part due to:

“Vendors expressed concerns about inadvertent and unintentional messaging on race, skintone, and family composition.”

Incidentally, Facebook added family skin tone support in 2017 with 125 family options^[7], which it retains today.

Unicode does not restrict any individual vendors from extending skin tone support to any any grouping, though without widespread cross-platform support, it's relatively inadvisable to implement emoji sequences that won't display correctly on other platforms.

Above: Skin tone options for families have been on Facebook since 2017.

The recommendation

The entire document on family skin tone combinations is a helpful read to get up to speed on the reasoning behind declining each option.

The recommended option that has been chosen: the status quo. The yellow set of families, just as they appear today.

As with any committee or standards body, there is an interest in ensuring all member views are represented. Having Unicode recommend changes that aren't supported by vendors only results in documentation being out of sync with reality.

To that end, this report is useful as a reflection of where the consensus lies today.

I do think it's worth taking a closer look at one option in this report. One that might have more merit than is first apparent.

An alternative

There is one simple way out of this problem. An implementation that is unlikley to win any fans, but is technically feasible and fair to users.

To recap, the prevailing view right now is that it is:

a. technically impractical to add thousands of family emojis, and
b. undesirable to add just a subset of families

Therefore:

c. what if the families just weren't yellow any more?

Consider the impact if the family emojis showed up as plain silhouettes on the keyboard instead of yellow families.^[8]

Above: Mockups of emoji family silhouettes based on current vendor designs. Image: Apple/Google designs + Emojipedia Silhouette Mockups.

The Unicode response to this possibility is that:

“The silhouette approach left the renderings being impersonal and overall extremely unnatural”

It is true that silhouettes are less personal than semi-realistic people.

It's also true each silhouette family emoji could end up looking quite similar on the keyboard. They might be less popular as a result. They certainly aren't natural.

When it comes to emoji equality: it does not seem fair to leave a set of emojis on the keyboard that approximate a white family, while black families are left with nothing resembling their own family.

If the alternative is a less-useful set of families on the keyboard for everyone, so be it.

Above: Could a simple approach solve this issue? Images: Screenshots from iOS and Android (left) / Emojipedia mockups (right).

Some benefits of this approach include:

1. Upholding backward compatibility. If anyone used a family emoji in the past, it will still be somewhat clear what emoji that was - even if it takes a new silhoutette form.
2. Should vendors want to stash these less-useful silhouette families in an obscure section of the emoji keyboard (like 👤👥🗣), they won't seem out of place.
3. Unicode makes a note about encouraging use of individual people in sequence, for maximum flexibility. By downgrading the usefulness of this current family set, the alternative becomes more palatable.
4. Any concerns that supporting a subset of skin tones for families could result in a perception that the implementation is incomplete would be removed. It's clear that silhouettes never get skin tones.

Generally when I cover the topic of family emojis, the strong view returning is that whatever the challenges, vendors should just get on with making a black family emoji.

The obvious choice ahead isn't clear, but it seems there is a public consensus that the status quo on the family emojis shouldn't remain indefinitely.

Silhouettes might please no-one, but at least they might displease everyone equally.

Twitter has begun rollout of its latest emoji update. Versioned as Twemoji 13.0, this update includes all of the new 2020 emojis such as Smiling Face with Tear, People Hugging, Bubble Tea and the Pinched Fingers.

Above: all of the new emoji designs featured in Twemoji 13.0.

A total of 103 new emojis have been introduced to the Twitter emoji set in Twemoji 13.0.

While Emoji 13.0 contains 117 new emojis recommended for general interchange (RGI), Twitter has been supporting the 🏳️‍⚧️ Transgender Flag and ⚧ Transgender Symbol since they were drafted in mid-2019.

Additionally, 🤵‍♀️ Woman in Tuxedo has been supported on Twitter since 2017, despite only being a added as a recommended emoji in 2020. This is possible due to the sequence format used for these emojis.

🆕 New

There are two new smileys included in Twemoji 13.0: 🥲 Smiling Face with Tear and 🥸 Disguised Face.

🥲 Smiling Face with Tear in particular has been a popular request for some time. It will be interesting to see if it does as well as another popular emoji in recent years: 🥺 Pleading Face.

A single new gesture has been added in Twemoji 13.0: 🤌 Pinched Fingers, also known as the "ma che vuoi" hand gesture.^[1]

As with all gestures and body part emojis displaying a single individual, the 🤌 Pinched Fingers supports skin tone modifiers.

There are also two now anatomy-based emojis, 🫀 Anatomical Heart and a pair of 🫁 Lungs.

People

A total of 8 new people have been added in this update, of which seven support skin tone modifiers.

The only one lacking skin tone support is 🫂 People Hugging, which displays two abstracted human forms in an affectionate embrace.

• 🥷 Ninja
• 👰‍♂️ Man with Veil
• 👰‍♀️ Woman with Veil^[2]
• 👩‍🍼 Woman Feeding Baby
• 👨‍🍼 Man Feeding Baby
• 🧑‍🍼 Person Feeding Baby
• 🧑‍🎄 Mx Claus
• 🫂 People Hugging

Animals & Nature

There are 12 new animal emojis in Twemoji 13.0, including a 🪶 Feather.

The new 🐈‍⬛ Black Cat and 🐻‍❄️ Polar Bear are of particular note here, as they are new zero width joiner (ZWJ) sequences using the previously available 🐈 Cat and 🐻 Bear emojis respectively.

These will show on older systems as the two emojis side-by-side, but on Twemoji platforms will show as a single emoji.

• 🐈‍⬛ Black Cat
• 🦬 Bison
• 🦣 Mammoth
• 🦫 Beaver
• 🐻‍❄️ Polar Bear
• 🦤 Dodo
• 🪶 Feather
• 🦭 Seal
• 🪲 Beetle
• 🪳 Cockroach
• 🪰 Fly
• 🪱 Worm

Food & Drink

There are eight new food and drink emojis in Twemoji 13.0, including the much-requested 🧋 Bubble Tea.

• 🫐 Blueberries
• 🫒 Olive
• 🫑 Bell Pepper
• 🫓 Flatbread
• 🫔 Tamale
• 🫕 Fondue
• 🫖 Teapot
• 🧋 Bubble Tea

Miscellaneous

Rounding out Twemoji 13.0 are 32 additional new emojis which fit into the broad categories of nature, objects, and symbols. These include 🪃 Boomerang, 🪦 Headstone, 🪅 Piñata and 🛗 Elevator.

Above: a selection of the remaining 32 different new emojis featured in Twemoji 13.0.

• 🪴 Potted Plant
• 🪨 Rock
• 🪵 Wood
• 🛖 Hut
• 🛻 Pickup Truck
• 🛼 Roller Skate
• 🪄 Magic Wand
• 🪅 Piñata
• 🪆 Nesting Dolls
• 🪡 Sewing Needle
• 🪢 Knot
• 🩴 Thong Sandal
• 🪖 Military Helmet
• 🪗 Accordion
• 🪘 Long Drum
• 🪙 Coin
• 🪃 Boomerang
• 🪚 Carpentry Saw
• 🪛 Screwdriver
• 🪝 Hook
• 🪜 Ladder
• 🛗 Elevator
• 🪞 Mirror
• 🪟 Window
• 🪠 Plunger
• 🪤 Mouse Trap
• 🪣 Bucket
• 🪥 Toothbrush
• 🪦 Headstone
• 🪧 Placard

🆙 Changed

👰 Person With Veil now displays with a gender-neutral emoji design.

The design previously used for 👰 Person With Veil is now found under the new sequence: 👰‍♀️ Woman with Veil.

📶 Release

Rollout of Twemoji 13.0 began today across Twitter's various platforms.

In the coming days and weeks Twemoji 13.0 support is likely to continue to all users of the Twitter website, the Twitter mobile site, Tweetdeck, and progressively roll out to Twitter apps on Android for supported users.

During last month's Twemoji 12.1.16, some users of the Twitter website saw the emoji update before others.

This is likely due to the new version of the Twitter website using scalable vector graphic files (SVG), while 'old Twitter' continues to use a set of PNG files which only display at a single resolution. Both Twitter websites continue, with most modern browsers using 'new Twitter'.

The Twemoji 13.0 emoji files are also available via the Open Source Twemoji Repository.^[3]

As with all Twitter updates, users of the iOS Twitter app will continue to see Apple emoji designs, as Twitter for iOS defers to the system for native emoji support.

iOS Twitter users will see support for the 2020 emoji additions when Apple releases an iOS update later this year. Alternatively, iOS users (and some Android users for whom the Twemoji option is not available in the app) can use the Twitter mobile website to see the new emoji support.^[4]

• View all Twemoji emojis
• View every new emoji in Twemoji 13.0
• View every changed emoji in Twemoji 13.0
• View the Twemoji 12.1.5 Emoji Changelog from January 2020

Following the death of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests against racism and police brutality, Emojipedia experienced a signification increase in lookups of the ✊🏿 Raised Fist with Dark Skin Tone emoji.

Trending: ✊🏿 Raised Fist with Dark Skin Tone https://t.co/RYrQjh8jlz #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/tOEVGYtftF

— Emojipedia 📙 (@Emojipedia) June 1, 2020

Emulating the historic gesture of support and solidarity, this emoji has a long-standing association with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Emojipedia has conducted an analysis of the raised fist emoji along with related emojis and hashtags, to better understand the response to this trajedy and the ensuing conversation online.

🔝✊🏿 Emojis of #BlackLivesMatter

To conduct this analysis we collected a sample of 278,244 tweets that included "Black Lives Matter" and "BLM" either as a hashtag or as a text string.

These tweets were collected between on 4th and 5th of June 2020 and, upon investigation, 11.79% of this sample (32,814 tweets) featured at least one emoji^[1].

Above: the top ten most frequently used emojis on our sample of 278,244 Black Lives Matter tweets.

1. ✊ Raised Fist
2. 😭 Loudly Crying Face
3. 🖤 Black Heart
4. ❤️ Red Heart
5. 😂 Face with Tears of Joy
6. 🙏 Folded Hands
7. 🥺 Pleading Face
8. 👏 Clapping Hands
9. 🤣 Rolling on the Floor Laughing
10. 💜 Purple Heart

Across these ten emojis we see clear themes of solidarity, support, and sadness.

The ✊ Raised Fist emoji was the most popular emoji used. This data combines all skin tone variations for any relevant emoji into a single entry, why may explain the considerably higher usage numbers for this emoji.^[2] Read on for details of the breakdown of skin tone usage for this emoji.

The second most common emoji, 😭 Loudly Crying Face, appears less than half as often in these tweets as any raised fist.

🖤 Black Heart can be used as a symbol of solidarity and support for and amongst black communities. ❤️ Red Heart and 💜 Purple Heart compound this expression of support.

The presence of 😂 Face with Tears of Joy and 🤣 Rolling on the Floor Laughing may at first appear odd, but these two emojis are well-documented as being amongst the most popular on the platform, and are commonly found across almost any sample of tweets, due to their considerable popularity.

🙏 Folded Hands is often used alongside expressions of hope and longing, and also recently saw an increase in use correlated with the spread of coronavirus.

The skin tone variations that make up the use of ✊ Raised Fist within #BlackLivesMatter tweets shows the darkest two skin tones making up the majority of use (52% combined).

Above: Use of each skin tone variant of the ✊ Raised Fist emoji within Black Lives Matter tweets.

In descending popularity within the Black Lives Matter sample of tweets:

1. ✊🏾 Raised Fist: Medium-Dark Skin Tone
2. ✊🏿 Raised Fist: Dark Skin Tone
3. ✊🏽 Raised Fist: Medium Skin Tone
4. ✊🏼 Raised Fist: Medium-Light Skin Tone
5. ✊🏻 Raised Fist: Light Skin Tone
6. ✊ Raised Fist (no skin tone modifier applied)

When compared to a general tweet sample, the difference is notable. In a general sample of 13 million tweets, 18,408 included at least one ✊ Raised Fist emoji, with 71% being the neutral yellow version, which appears when no skin tone is specified.

Above: ✊ Raised Fist use on Twitter, for a general sample of tweets.

This general sample uses tweets collected by Emojipedia between the 18th and 24th of May 2020.

The difference between the Black Lives Matter sample and the general sample is considerable, indicating the value of emoji skin tone modifiers in self-expression and representation in digital communications.

📸 Emoji Increases

In a further analysis we investigated which emojis saw a significant jump in popularity within the Black Lives Matter sample compared to a general sample of tweets.

Any emojis which did not experience at least 1,000 usage instances^[3] within this general sample have been excluded.

Above: a table displaying emojis which saw the largest increase in relative popularity in our Black Lives Matter sample of tweets.

1. ⬇️ Down Arrow
2. 📸 Camera with Flash
3. 🖕 Middle Finger
4. 🚨 Police Car Light
5. 📷 Camera
6. ⚠️ Warning
7. 🇺🇸 Flag: United States
8. 🤬 Face with Symbols on Mouth
9. 👆 Backhand Index Pointing Up
10. 💅 Nail Polish

The increase in use of ⬇️ Down Arrow emoji appears due to information sharing on Twitter. The arrow pointing downwards commonly seen pointing to additional content such as an image, a video or a link to another website. 👆 Backhand Index Pointing Up performs a similar function for content in a previous tweet or within the tweet itself.

The presence of both 📸 Camera with Flash and 📷 Camera indicate the sharing of footage from the protests on Twitter, or an encouragement to protesters to film their experience.

🚨 Police Car Light and ⚠️ Warning emojis are often used when sharing messages of alert or caution, while the increase in use of both the 🖕 Middle Finger and 🤬 Face with Symbols on Mouth are clearly evidence of frustration and anger.

📈 Public Sentiment

Recent polling from Civiqs shows a considerable increase in support of Black Lives Matter from US voters.

This is notable, and should be reflected in our conversations on Twitter.

Above: US Voter Support for Black Lives Matter. Source: Civiqs image via The New York Times.

To understand the context of this increased support, we investigated which words and emojis are commonly used in tweets that include ✊🏿 Raised Fist: Dark Skin Tone, 🖤 Black Heart and the various 👮 Police Officer emojis.

This sample contained a total of 76,561,213 tweets from across the globe.

Trends: ✊🏾 and ✊🏿:

Use of ✊🏾 Raised Fist: Medium-Dark Skin Tone and ✊🏿 Raised Fist: Dark Skin Tone began to rapidly increase around the 29th of May, the date on which a third degree murder charge was initially filed against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

Both then peaked in use on the 2nd of June, the day after two separate autopsies ruled that George Floyd’s death was a homicide.

Above: Use of the raised fist emojis with dark skin tones increased considerably on Twitter in late-May to early June 2020.

In tweets that include ✊🏾 or ✊🏿, the most common words all relate directly to Black Lives Matter.

Words and phrases that stand out include Justice For George Floyd, No Justice No Peace, Breonna Taylor, and love.

Above: Word Cloud of the terms most associated with ✊🏾 and ✊🏿 within a sample collected on the 4th and 5th of June 2020.

On average, tweets that include ✊🏾 or ✊🏿 also include one or more of the following emojis:

1. ✊🏽 Raised Fist: Medium Skin Tone
2. ✊🏼 Raised Fist: Medium-Light Skin Tone
3. ✊🏻 Raised Fist: Light Skin Tone
4. 🖤 Black Heart
5. ❤️ Red Heart
6. 💯 Hundred Points
7. 🔥 Fire
8. 🙏🏾 Folded Hands: Medium-Dark Skin Tone
9. ‼️ Double Exclamation Mark
10. 😭 Loudly Crying Face

Above: Emojis most commonly found in tweets including ✊🏾 Raised Fist: Medium-Dark Skin Tone or ✊🏿 Raised Fist: Dark Skin Tone.

Trends: 🖤

As with the ✊🏾 and ✊🏿, use of 🖤 Black Heart peaked on the 2nd of June. The change in use of this emoji is not as pronounced as the raised fists.

Above: 🖤 Black Heart emoji use on Twitter between the 1st May 2020 and the 8th June 2020.

It's worth noting that regular use of the black heart (as seen in early May) is similar to the peak of the black or brown fist in early June. Twitter is a large platform, and many tweets are sent daily with this emoji that have no relevance to Black Lives Matter.

Having said that, the most commonly found phrase in tweets using the 🖤 Black Heart emoji on the 4th and 5th of June 2020 is Black Lives Matter.

Above: Terms most associated with the 🖤 Black Heart emoji within a sample collected on the 4th and 5th of June 2020.

Emojis commonly found within this 🖤 Black Heart tweet sample are:

1. ❤️ Red Heart
2. ✊🏾 Raised Fist: Medium-Dark Skin Tone
3. ✨ Sparkles
4. ✊🏽 Raised Fist: Medium Skin Tone
5. 💙 Blue Heart
6. ✊🏿 Raised Fist: Dark Skin Tone
7. 💚 Green Heart
8. 💜 Purple Heart
9. 💛 Yellow Heart
10. 🌈 Rainbow

The presence of the other heart emojis such as the ❤️ Red Heart and 💙 Blue Heart alongside the 🖤 Black Heart is an expected finding.

Heart emojis, like other shape emojis, are often used in colourful combination for aesthetic purposes including the celebration of LGBTQ identity. June is LGBTQ Pride month in the United States in commemoration of the Stonewall Riots of 1969, at which the black transgender woman Marsha P. Johnson played a key role.

Trends: 👮

Notably, the 👮 Police Officer emoji - or any of its gender and skin tone variations - wasn't common within #BlackLivesMatter tweets.

Given the nature of protests, and ensuing police violence, the absense of this emoji within online discussion seemed curious.

Although use of 👮 Police Officer emojis did jump on the 25th of May, the day of George Floyd’s death, this increase was not outside the normal range of usage experienced by these emojis over the last month.

Above: Use of the 👮 Police Officer emojis on Twitter between in May and June 2020.

Phrases used in conjunction with the 👮 Police Officer emojis on the 4th and 5th of June 2020 included George, Black Lives Matter, fuck, cops, and Murdered.

Above: Terms most associated with the 👮 Police Officer emojis.

It's not that the number of uses of the police officer emojis increased in this period, but the conversation around these emojis did change to become primarily about Black Lives Matter.

The top ten other emojis found in tweets within the 👮 Police Officer tweet sample were:

1. 👇 Backhand Index Pointing Down
2. 🚓 Police Car
3. 👢 Woman’s Boot
4. 👀 Eyes
5. 🚔 Oncoming Police Car
6. 🇺🇸 Flag: United States
7. 🚨 Police Car Light
8. 🖕 Middle Finger
9. 😂 Face with Tears of Joy
10. ✊🏾 Raised Fist: Medium-Dark Skin Tone

Academic research has previously found that emojis are predominately used in positive emotional contexts. This may explain the higher use of emojis which support a cause such as Black Lives Matter (✊🏿, 🖤) more than emojis which may be perceived as the enemies of a cause (👮, 🚓).

Also worth noting is the fact that major vendors display police officer emojis smiling. The exact level of positivity varies by vendor, with most falling in the neutral-positive range.

Having a relaxed and smiling face makes sense for most human emojis, and while this consistently applied for all emoji professions (eg 🧑‍🚀 Astronaut, 🧑‍⚖️ Judge, or 🧑‍🎤 Singer), it may make the 👮 Police Officer emoji less useful in conversations about police racism and violence.

Above: Appearance of the 👮 Police Officer emoji as it appears on different apps and operating systems. Image: Vendors / Emojipedia composite.

Google has released the Android 11 beta, which includes support for latest emojis.

Emoji additions include Smiling Face with Tear and Pinched Fingers.

Above: A selection of the emojis designs available in the latest Android 11 beta.

This beta includes support for 117 new emojis, all of which are from Unicode's Emoji 13.0 release approved earlier this year.

Earlier this year Pixel users were given an emoji update for Emoji 12.1 release. This included a series of gender neutral emojis, brought forward by Unicode in late 2019.

Although the 117 new emojis from Emoji 13.0 are supported in the Android 11 beta, they are not yet accessible via the emoji keyboard section of Gboard.

To test these new emojis in the beta release, users can copy and paste from the web. It should be noted that as no other major vendor (except Twitter) supports these new emojis at this time, these will not be suitable for common use.

Above: "Copy and paste this emoji" area for Smiling Face with Tear as viewed on Android 11 beta.

📶 Release

Android 11 Beta is now available for Google Pixel 4 / 4XL, Pixel 3a / 3a XL, Pixel 3 / 3 XL, and Pixel 2 / 2 XL. This is pre-release software for testing and not recommended for regular users on a primary device.

As with all beta software, designs released by Google are subject to change prior to the final release.

The latest emojis will come to more devices when Android 11 is final in the second half of this year. Timelines for rollout will vary by device and region, with some phones getting updates sooner than others.

As with all Android emoji updates, Samsung devices have their own emoji set which operates on a different timeline to Google's emoji font. Additionally, some Android apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter implement emoji support with app-specific designs that are released independently of operating system updates.

In short: emoji updates are coming to Android later this year for many users, but if you want to test it now, Android 11 beta is the way to do so.

JoyPixels has released version 6.0 of its freemium emoji set. This update includes the latest batch of new emojis and a wide-ranging series of design changes.

All 117 new emojis approved in Emoji 13.0 are included in JoyPixels 6.0.

Above: New emojis in JoyPixels version 6.0.

🆕 New

The two new smileys in this release are 🥲 Smiling Face with Tear and 🥸 Disguised Face. Also included in this release is the popular 🤌 Pinched Fingers gesture.

Above: Smileys & People in JoyPixels 6.0.

The remaining 52 new emojis in JoyPixels 6.0 include 🐈‍⬛ Black Cat and 🐻‍❄️ Polar Bear in 🐻 Animals & Nature, 🧋 Bubble Tea and 🫖 Teapot in 🍔 Food & Drink, and 🪃 Boomerang and 🪧 Placard within 💡 Objects, as well as the 🏳️‍⚧️ Transgender Flag.

Above: New in JoyPixels 6.0.

The full list of new emojis in JoyPixels 6.0 can be viewed here.

🆙 Changed

JoyPixels updates generally include a number of design changes and version 6.0 is no different.

😘 Face Blowing a Kiss has updated eyebrows and a new mouth shape.

🤢 Nauseated Face and 🥴 Woozy Face also have an updated eyebrow shape, along with subtle updates to the facial expressions.

😈 Smiling Face with Horns now has green eyes with dark shadowing underneath.

🐱 Cat Face is now more rounded and displays large cartoonish eyes.

🐶 Dog Face and 🐵 Monkey Face have larger eyes, and rounder heads.

🔫 Pistol now shows as a green water gun, following other vendors changes in recent years.

👰 Person With Veil now displays with a gender-inclusive design.^[1]

🤵 Person in Tuxedo now displays with a gender-inclusive design.^[2]

🏴‍☠️ Pirate Flag now displays with a rectangular design, per most other vendors.

📶 Release

JoyPixels 6.0 is available now. Like the previous JoyPixels update, it is available on a freemium basis, with licensing required for some but not all usage types.

Read more about the the 6.0 release announcement and related licencing details on the JoyPixels website..

• Browse every JoyPixels emoji
• New in JoyPixels 6.0
• JoyPixels 5.5 Emoji Changelog

Six years ago I decided to create a global holiday, and in 2020 it's still with us: World Emoji Day.

In fact, as of this week, the 📅 Calendar emoji now shows July 17 on nearly every major platform:

Twitter just released a minor update to its Twemoji set, which updated the calendar to show July 17 for the first time.

The Twemoji design originally showed the calendar on July 15, Twitter's launch date. So many people thought this was a bug (being close in proximity to July 17) that it was changed to March 21, the founding date of Twitter the company.

Twemoji is shown for all users of the Twitter website, and a majority of Twitter users on Android.

Now on the seventh annual World Emoji Day, there will be less confusion when people are tweeting this Friday July 17, and using 📅 U+1F4C5 otherwise known as "Calendar".

Origin

World Emoji Day was something I created a year into starting Emojipedia. At the time it felt like every idea had some form of online tribute to it, and so it seemed unfair that emojis shouldn't also have their own day.

Partly launched as a bit of fun, I also figured it was inevitable that someone would create an emoji day, and if that's the case, then Emojipedia seems well placed to host the day.

Having originally planned to make this day later in the year (I was toying with November 21, the day Apple brought emoji to iPhone), it became obvious mid-July that actually July 17 was the perfect date. The only date representable using an emoji.

On July 11, the tweet went up:

At the time emoji support was somewhat limited, and often hidden, on non-Apple phones. Given this, the fact that this emoji only showed July 17 on iOS devices didn't seem like a big deal. July 17 showing on the calendar emoji was mostly a fun origin story, a quirky detail, not the whole point of the day.

Nonetheless, as the day grew in popularity, the various dates shown on other platforms brought about confusion, and so most have now changed to show July 17.

As for why Apple chose July 17 for the generic calendar emoji in the first place: it was mostly an easter egg, the placeholder date used on Apple products since iCal for Mac was launched on that date in 2003.

Evolution of a Day

The first World Emoji Day, announced with barely six days notice, was relatively uneventual, but a fun time with people messing with emojis online.

Over time it's become a focal-point for emoji news, announcements, and often just a bit of a distraction from everything else that's going on.

The Empire State Building was lit 'emoji yellow' in 2017. In 2018, Emojiland the Muscial premiered on World Emoji Day. In 2019 Apple used the day to preview new emojis coming to iOS later in the year.

What is happening in 2020?

Most companies bring out emoji news throughout July 17, with Australia and New Zealand getting in on the action while it's still July 16 around much of the planet.

Emojipedia hosts the World Emoji Awards each year. In 2020 we have three awards:

1. Most Popular New Emoji: data-driven analysis of which emoji approved in 2019 is now the most used.
2. Most Anticipated Emoji: the emoji approved this year, not yet on most phones, that people are most looking forward to. User-voted.
3. Most 2020 Emoji: Which emoji best represents 2020? Users shortlisted 16 emojis, and the bracket now looks like this:

As for everything else happening on the day, the best places to stay on top of the news are:

• 📙 Here on the Emojipedia blog where we will cover any major announcements
• 📅 World Emoji Day on: Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or Facebook
• 🥳 #WorldEmojiDay hashtag on Twitter is also a good glimpse at what's happening in real-time

For World Emoji Day, Google has announced a number of classic emojis returning to Android this fall.

Promising to "protect this perfect tortoise with our lives" (a reference to the popular pastime of reviewing emoji designs on Tumblr), Google has indicated that a number of older designs will be coming back to the animal section of the Android 11 emoji keyboard.

This includes the return of popular designs that were previous modified, such as the 2013 🐢 Turtle and the 2016 🐸 Frog. No, there isn't any word about the blobs.

Some emojis evoke the previous more playful appearance, but are in fact new designs. Other updates have also made been to improve certain emojis' compatibility with Android's dark-mode.

Above: Classic and new emoji designs coming to Android 11.

A selection of updated and returning designs are shown below, tracking their changes over the years. Many of these were first introduced in 2012's Android 4.3 emoji set - Android's first native emoji support.

The update will also include all 117 new emojis from Emoji 13.0. Those subscribed to Google's Android Beta programme will have already have had access to these new emojis, with their release confirmed as part of this upcoming fall update.

⏳🔜🆙 Google's Changes Over Time

🐢 Turtle will return to its highly-popular design from 2013.

🐸 Frog will return to its chubby-cheeked 2013 incarnation.

🐣 Hatching Chick in Android 11 gains a new design, evoking the older one - but without pieces of shell in the air.

🐷 Pig Face has a smiling design coming to Android 11.

🐙 Octopus will have a completely new design that no longer featuring an imposing glare.

🦂 Scorpion will have a new design with a cute friendly smile.

🐳 Spouting Whale will be more anatomically accurate with prominent throat grooves.

📶 Release

Android 11 is coming to devices from this fall.

See our previous Android 11 beta coverage for more about this release.

• View all of the current Android 10 emoji designs
• Google March 2020 Pixel Feature Drop Emoji Changelog
• Android 10.0 Emoji Changelog