Every year, the Unicode Consortium decides on new emoji characters that will be coming to smartphones and other devices in the future, and this week, the Unicode 17 emoji recommendations came out [PDF].
Eight new emoji characters have been proposed, including hairy creature (like Bigfoot), distorted face, fight cloud, apple core, orca, trombone, landslide, and treasure chest. There are also skin tone variations for a number of existing emoji like ballet dancer, people with bunny ears, and people wrestling.
The Unicode consortium created mockups of what the emoji might look like, with the images shared by Emojipedia. It is important to note that the Unicode Consortium only comes up with the underlying emoji code, and Apple designers will create their own version of each character in the Apple style when the Unicode 17 standard is finalized.
Unicode 17 will likely be approved sometime next fall, though it will take Apple time to implement the new characters. We could see them around spring 2026 if Apple sticks with its typical emoji release timeline.
In 2025, Apple will introduce the Unicode 16 characters, which were approved in September 2024. Unicode 16 emoji include face with bags under eyes, fingerprint, leafless tree, root vegetable, harp, shovel, and splatter.
Apple last introduced new emoji with the iOS 17.4 update that was released in March 2024. Characters added in iOS 17.4 include lime, an edible brown mushroom, a phoenix, a broken chain, shaking head vertically (as in a "yes" nod), and shaking head horizontally (a "no" head shake).
With iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2, Apple will debut Genmoji for devices that support Apple Intelligence. Genmoji are a customizable version of emoji that are generated based on a phrase supplied by the user. Genmoji behave like emoji on Apple devices, but are not cross-platform and don't display like emoji characters on Android devices.
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