What to know

  • Apple may introduce a total of 118 new emojis that have been drafted and approved by the Unicode Consortium this year. 
  • These emojis consist of new gender-neutral family emojis, new emoji concepts (head shaking, lime, phoenix, broken chain, etc.), and new people emojis with specific direction variations.
  • Based on previous iOS updates, we can expect the new emojis to appear inside iOS 17 with a software update sometime in early 2024. 

New Emojis in iOS 17

Emojis have long been talking points of major iOS updates as new emojis are released every year, a little after a new iOS version is introduced. This time, we could see a total of 118 new emojis that will be part of Emoji 15.1 which is the officially drafted list approved by the Unicode Consortium. For those of you who don’t know, the Unicode Consortium is the standards body whose voting members include Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

Credit: Unicode

The 118 new emojis that are part of Emoji 15.1 consist of new gender-neutral family emojis, new emoji concepts, and new people emojis with specific direction variations. 

The new gender-neutral family emojis include:

  • Family: Adult, Adult, Child
  • Family: Adult, Child, Child
  • Family: Adult, Child
  • Family: Adult, Adult, Child, Child

The new emoji concepts are emojis that have been created from scratch; these include:

  • Head shaking horizontally
  • Head shaking vertically 
  • Phoenix
  • Lime
  • Brown Mushroom
  • Broken Chain

The new people emojis are now designed to face rightwards, contrary to the existing set of person emojis all of which were made to face leftwards. These new people emojis include:

  • Person Walking Facing Right
  • Person Running Facing Right
  • Person Kneeling Facing Right
  • Person with White Cane Facing Right
  • Person in Manual Wheelchair Facing Right
  • Person in Motorized Wheelchair Facing Right

All of the 6 people emojis listed above come with skin tone and gender variations of their own, resulting in a total of 108 new direction-specific people emojis [6 new emoji versions x 6 skin tones (5 colored + 1 uncolored) x 3 person types (man, woman, gender neutral person)]. 

Related: iOS 17 Standby Mode Digital Clock: Step-By-Step Guide

When should you see these new emojis on your iPhone?

The last time Apple introduced new emojis was when it released the iOS 16.4 update to the iPhones. The new emojis came several months after iOS 16 was rolled out publicly in February 2023. So, we can expect the new Emoji 15.1 additions on iPhones sometime in early 2024 if Apple continues to follow its previous timeline. 

That’s all you need to know about the new emojis that are set to release in iOS 17. 

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