First Look: New Emojis in iOS 13.2

Today's latest iOS beta — iOS 13.2 beta 2 — is the first to include new emojis previewed by Apple in July of this year.

Additions include accessibility emojis such as people in wheelchairs or with a hearing aid, a flamingo, waffle, and skin tone support for people holding hands.

Shown for the first time today are Apple's otter emoji, ringed planet, beverage box, and pinching hand emojis, amongst others.

These were approved as part of the same Emoji 12.0 update from Unicode earlier this year, but were not included in Apple's World Emoji Day preview.

First Look

One of the most-discussed new emojis approved in 2019 has been the 🤏 Pinching Hand, which looks like this in the latest iOS beta:

Also coming to iOS 13.2 and available now in the latest developer beta is the 🦦 Otter.

The 🪐 Ringed Planet emoji which mostly resembles Saturn, at least in our solar system, will have at least one prominent fan when released in October or November this year.

Of all the new accessibility emojis proposed by Apple in 2018, one has changed appearance from the proposal stage to this beta: the service dog emoji. The new emoji is less likely to be mixed up with the also-new guide dog emoji.

Holding Hands

For the first time on iOS, options are available to select a combination of skin tones for any of:

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

This uses a brand new type of interface where the skin tones are selected for the left and right people one at a time. A future-looking style of menu which could be used to support skin tones within families in future.

Missing from this release is the an option to add gender inclusive people holding hands and the various matching skin tone options from the emoji keyboard.

With the recent announcement of Emoji 12.1 from the Unicode Consortium which primarily adds new gender neutral sequences, it seems possible that Apple may hold off on gender neutral support until the publication of Emoji 12.1 later this year.

The gender inclusive people holding hands are supported in the emoji font, but not shown on the keyboard in this beta release.

Oddly, these gender inclusive people display in all-white clothing. This has been used as a neutral color in the past on emojis like the selfie. The shade works fine on the t-shirt, but looks somewhat out of place when paired with white trousers - especially when next to the colorful clothing of the women and men. Perhaps this will change prior to a final release.

Given Apple is one of the vendors requesting additional skin tone combinations for a gender inclusive couple holding hands, it seems unlikely these would not be added to the keyboard in a future update.

Gender Neutral

Another large change in this release is support for the barely-announced Emoji 12.1 updates which add a gender inclusive option to the majority of human emojis.

Earlier this year Google signalled a move to make use of existing emoji code points which didn't specify a gender, to give this a distinct appearance. Emoji 12.1 fleshes out this set by providing new gender neutral sequences for nearly all people in the emoji set. These are reflected in today's iOS 13.2 beta.

Now on the iOS emoji keyboard, a choice of three options is available: woman, person, or man.

Unlike other implementations, Apple's gender options are not contained within a submenu on the emoji keyboard, and are instead shown side by side on the top level.

This means a gender inclusive office worker, singer, vampire or merperson can now be sent, alongside the previous options available for women or men.

Release

iOS 13.2 beta 2 is available to iOS developers today, and will come to a public release in October or November 2019 as a free software update.

As with any beta software, designs may not be final and are subject to change.

For a specific list of the new emojis supported in iOS 13.2 beta 2, browse both:

• Emoji 12.0 (Feb 2019)
• Emoji 12.1 (Oct 2019)

See also: iOS 13.1 Emoji Changelog for a number of recent emoji corrections in iOS.