Yahoo News Apple will add over 100 new emojis in future update – including gender-neutral icons and the transgender flag
Apple users on iOS 14 are going to get 117 new emojis very soon.
These new icons, which include gender-neutral ones as well as an all-important transgender flag emoji, are currently in beta-testing on version 14.2 of iOS.
Also being added is a fly, a cockroach, a man holding a baby and a man wearing a wedding veil.
One of the gender-neutral emojis appears to be two people with no discernable gender hugging each other.
Emojipedia reported: “Prior releases assigned a man to wear the tuxedo and a woman to wear a veil, but these have been reclassified by Unicode as gender-neutral emoji in Emoji 13.0, paving the way for consistent options for women or men to wear either, in addition to the default person design".
Emojipedia also mentioned that there would be an Mx Claus, which is a gender-inclusive alternative to Santa or Mrs Claus.
“The bottle feeding options come as an addition to the Breast-Feeding emoji which was added to iOS in 2017.”
Apple users will also be getting a fly and cockroach emojis.
The process of adding in emojis seems to be entirely arbitrary considering how Apple users will also be getting an olive, a beaver, bubble tea (this one makes sense), a dodo and a ninja, to name a few of the 117 new ones.
In any case, The Unicode Consortium, which is the body in charge of adding emojis, approved these 117 new ones. It seems like they won't be exclusive to Apple phones, as each OS and individual developers will be responsible for drawing up their own versions of these to release on their own platforms.
Apple will also be adding more skin tone options to existing emojis in the interest of full inclusion.
These icons are all currently in beta-testing but, according to some sources, the expected release of this update will be in October 2020 at some point.
