Apple Teases New Emoji Coming to iOS, macOS and watchOS
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Apple is celebrating World Emoji Day on July 17 by teasing some of the new emoji characters slated to arrive on its various operating systems this fall.
All in all, there are more than 70 new emoji based on approved characters in the Unicode 11.0 standard. They’ll join thousands of existing emoji in iOS 12, macOS Mojave and watchOS 5 later this year.
The Cupertino tech giant showed off just a portion of the new emoji in a press release ahead of World Emoji Day.
Among the most notable additions are new hair options to “better present” various people, including characters with red hair, gray hair and curly hair, as well as several bald emoji options.
Unicode 11.0 will also add a variety of smiley face emojis, including a cold or freezing face, a face with a party horn and hat, a pleading face (think “puppy dog eyes), and a face surrounded by hearts. A new superhero emoji in various gender variants is also on the docket.
There are also some notable animal offerings, too. Apple is adding new kangaroo, peacock, parrot and lobster characters.
For food lovers, the Unicode 11.0 standard also adds mango, lettuce, cupcake, moon cake and other popular food items. When it comes to additional symbol and item characters, the new Unicode update adds a softball, nazar amulet and infinity symbol.
While Apple just teased a small portion of the upcoming Unicode characters, the Unicode Consortium announced the finalized set of new emoji back in February.
Some of the other options that are likely to hit Apple operating systems in the fall are woozy face, hot face, bagel, llama, hippopotamus, mosquito, swan, fire extinguisher, test tube, toilet paper roll, sponge and a pirate flag. There are also emoji for activities like knitting, chess, Frisbee, lacrosse and skateboarding.
While directionally reversible emoji were rumored for Unicode 11.0, they weren’t approved for release this year. Instead, they’re being considered for Unicode 12.0 (which will coincide with iOS 13 and Apple’s other 2019 operating system updates).