Apple Previews New Emoji Coming Later this Year

World Emoji Day is celebrated on July 17. Apple celebrated by sharing some of its new emoji that will be coming to iOS, macOS, and watchOS later this year. In addition, the App Store highlighted apps that create or do fun things with emoji, and iTunes Movies featured emoji in place of select movie titles.

Love them or hate them, emoji have become a fun way to express an emotion on social media. Personally, the only emoji I have used are the ones that automatically appear when you post something on Twitter about a current event. For example, people who tweeted #ElectionDay during the 2016 election got an automatically placed ballot box emoji in their tweet.

With thousands of emoji available on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac, there are many ways to add personality to every message. New emoji include Woman with Headscarf, Bearded Person, and Breastfeeding, and food items such as Sandwich and Coconut. More animals and mythical creatures like T-Rex, Zebra, Zombie and Elf are a fun way to describe situations and new Star Struck and Exploding Head smiley faces make any message more fun. 

I like that Apple has added some diversity into the new emojis. There already are emoji of women doing various things, but none of them were wearing a headscarf. The Breastfeeding emoji can be used as a quick way for nursing moms to share their experiences on social media.

I like that the Elf emoji shows an Elf who has dark skin. There are some emoji that allow people to select a version of it from a variety of skin tones, and Apple chose to feature the Elf with dark skin. It’s a nice way of including people of color who also happen to be geeks.