New emojis are coming to iOS this year, and for World Emoji Day Apple has revealed to Emojipedia its first preview of how these will look.

Ninja, Boomerang, Piñata and Bubble Tea are among the additions shown in today's iOS emoji preview.

Approved by Unicode as part of Emoji 13.0, the emoji list for 2020 was announced in January 2020. Given that each platform vendor creates its own designs for every emoji, these usually take until the second half of the year to arrive in operating system updates for end users.

Today is the first time Apple has shown the following new 2020 emojis, coming later in the year to iOS, iPadOS and macOS:

• Dodo
• Nesting Dolls
• Piñata
• Tamale
• Pinched Fingers
• Boomerang
• Ninja
• Coin
• Anatomical Heart
• Beaver
• Transgender Symbol
• Bubble Tea
• Lungs

Emojis approved and coming to iOS this year (but not previewed today) include Smiling Face with Tear, Disguised Face, and People Hugging.

New

Potentially more relevant than expected in 2020 is the emoji for lungs, which comes alongside an anatomical heart.

One of the most discussed new emojis approved this year is the so-called "Italian Hand" gesture (actual name: Pinched Fingers) which will look like this on Apple platforms:

It's not often helpful to zoom into an emoji as they're so commonly seen at small sizes. The goal is that it can be identified alongside text.

However given it is World Emoji Day and we have this emoji preview, I did want to note the beautiful details on the nesting dolls, which shows the 🌷 and 🌼 from Apple's other flower emojis.

The Piñata and Tamale are shown in this preview in considerable detail, with the Piñata taking a traditional nine-point design.

There have been calls for a more suitable mask-wearing emoji in 2020, as the existing 😷 Face with Medical Mask emoji depicts a sad or sick looking face.

Given that new emoji proposals take up to two years to arrive on phones, we aren't likely to see any Covid-specific emojis on phones this year.

A Ninja emoji - approved prior to the global pandemic - isn't exactly an alternative to a regular face-mask - but they are covered up. This is the version coming to iOS in the Northern Hemisphere autumn/fall:

Additionally, Apple is providing a number of new Memoji options for various headwear and colored face masks, which can be used as stickers in iOS messaging apps.

Release

New emojis come to iOS in the second half of the year, most commonly in a release such as iOS 14.1 or iOS 14.2 in October.

This was the case for iOS 13.2 in 2019, iOS 12.1 in 2018 and iOS 11.1 in 2017.

If past schedules are anything to go by, expect these to come to a beta release of iOS in September or October, after the release of iOS 14.0.