Fall Unicode update will add 8 emoji to our keyboards

Summary

• Unicode Emoji 16.0 Alpha is open for early review, with new emoji set to be released in September 2024.
• The new emoji include a face with bags under eyes, a fingerprint, a leafless tree, a root vegetable, a harp, a shovel, an abstract splatter, and a flag.
• The images shown below are samples and may be subject to improvement, with OEMs having the opportunity to customize them to match their emoji styles.

Don’t you just hate it when you want to explain in a text that you’ve been up all night digging up beets in your garden? Or that you’re at a crime scene where a harp player was kidnapped while walking through a winter wood? When words just don’t do it justice, we have the assistance of emoji to get our point across, for practically any emotion… or bizarrely specific circumstance. Occasionally, we’re met with the frustrating first-world problem of not having an emoji to depict what we’re experiencing or feeling. That’s why the folks in charge of that keyboard of little pictures periodically consider suggestions for new additions to their repertoire.

Where do emoji come from? These little pictographs are overseen by the Unicode Consortium, a panel of emote-experts assembled from tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple. No new emoji, like the batch just released last fall in Emoji 15.1, reaches your device’s keyboard without the Unicode Consortium’s stamp of approval.

According to a February 6 blog post from Unicode, the latest batch of emoji is now open for early review with Unicode Emoji 16.0 Alpha, which is planned for a release in September 2024. Eight new emoji are set to roll out with this update, with new symbols in these categories: Smileys and Emotion, People and Body, Animals and Nature, Food and Drink, Objects, Symbols, and Flags.

The first new emoji is described as a “face with bags under eyes,” an expression that is as horrifying as it is relatable. Design art in the emoji’s proposal shows an all-nighter college student or a parent in desperate need of caffeine — eyes droopy and bloodshot, dark half-moons under each. Keywords for this face are exhausted, sleepy, and tired.

Unicode 16.0 emoji candidates, from left to right: face with bags under eyes, fingerprint, leafless tree, root vegetable, harp, shovel, splatter (flag of Sark not pictured)

Next up is the fingerprint emoji. That’s the short name of this new symbol and exactly what it looks like: a blue-on-blue rendition of a fingerprint. Keywords include forensics, identity, and safety. With the keywords barren, drought, and winter, there’s also a new tree emoji expected, but this one is devoid of leaves, hence the short name leafless tree. Under Food and Drink we see the addition of a red, bulbous root vegetable, with keywords beet, garden, root, turnip, and vegetable.

Two new emoji are joining the Objects category: A harp, with keywords Cupid, instrument, love, music, and orchestra. Plus a shovel, with dig, hole, scoop, and spade as the keywords. In Symbols, we are getting an abstract splatter, with keywords holi, paint, spill, and stain. It’s unclear whether this one will have different color options; the submitted proposal suggested a pink or yellow splatter, while Unicode rolled out the splatter in purple. And finally, the eighth emoji in Emoji 16.0 is the flag for Sark, a sovereign state in the Channel Islands. No official sample was included for that one at this time.

The images included in the Emoji 16.0 update are samples, and Unicode says that, while these samples are near finalized, “suggestions for improvement may still be entertained.” Of course, the images you see above aren’t exactly as they’ll appear once these new emoji start hitting Android devices — OEMs like Google and Samsung will get a chance to tweak them to suit their exiting emoji styles. If you have any strong opinions about the new characters and want your voice heard, Unicode is accepting feedback on the emoji until April 2. Use this online contact form and be sure to put 498 in the PRI Number box.