In celebration of World Emoji Day, Apple has shared a look at the upcoming new emoji coming this fall. Fifty-nine new emoji designs will be available this fall with a free software update for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch.
The new designs are intended to bring more diversity to the Apple virtual keyboard, as well as fun new emojis in the ever-popular food, animals, activities and smiley faces categories.
The Holding Hands emoji, which is generally used to represent couples and relationships, will now allow users to select any combination of skin tone and gender combinations opening up more than 75 possible combinations.
More disability-themed emoji – including a new guide dog, an ear with a hearing aid, wheelchairs, a prosthetic arm and a prosthetic leg – will be available in the emoji keyboard.
Other emoji categories are also receiving updates, including a new smiley face for yawning, a one-piece swimsuit, new food items including a waffle, falafel, butter and garlic, and new animals like the sloth, flamingo, orangutan and skunk.
The new emoji are created based on the approved characters in Unicode 12.0, and will be released this fall.
World Emoji Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated on July 17. The day is deemed a “global celebration of emoji” and is celebrated with emoji events and product releases.
