Apple’s iOS 14.5 emoji promotes inclusivity, vaccines and the AirPods Max

As part of iOS 14.5, Apple is adding new emoji from the Emoji 13.1 version of Unicode Consortium, including skin color options for popular emojis and several new smiley faces and hearts. The company is also working on changes to other emojis that are already available.

The new changes in skin color and gender presentation are probably the most important to note. Popular emoji like “Couples Kissing” and “Couples with Heart” now have many more skin color variations for all options.

Image: Emojipedia

In addition to more skin tones, the beard emoji are also customized to allow not only the neutral “Person: Beard” but also “Man: Beard” and “Woman: Beard”.

Image: Emojipedia

Apple’s update also includes taking the new smiley faces included in the Unicode Consortium’s latest emoji series, including ‘Exhaling Face’, ‘Face with Spiral Eyes’ and ‘Face in Clouds’. Hearts, another emoji category, also has two new members joining their ranks, ‘Heart on Fire’ and ‘Mending Heart’.

All of these emojis were approved by the Unicode Consortium in September, which meant that merchants could begin to integrate them into their products and services at that point. But it depends on the individual companies to design what emoji look like on their devices and services, which is why a smiley face on your iPhone looks different than on Twitter. Businesses also decide when the new emoji arrives – Pixel users, for example, can use the new emoji since December.

Apple is also making adjustments to some existing emojis: the rock-climbing emoji now has a helmet, the emoji syringe is now a more generic one, rather than one filled with blood, and the headphones look like the AirPods Max.

The syringe change may be a legal tool for anyone writing about COVID-19. Not only is the new syringe less intimidating when blood is emptied, but it is also more applicable to vaccinations, which will hopefully become much more common soon. Check out this comparison from Emojipedia:

Changing the headphone emoji to look like AirPods Max, on the other hand, follows a familiar pattern: Apple regularly places its own products in its emoji set as a form of free product placement. (Apple’s mobile emoji, for example, looks a lot like an iPhone.) If you want to see how different the new headphone emoji is, Emojipedia is. made that comparison, also:

Apple says all of these emojis are available in the new version of the iOS 14.5 beta, which also offers a nice change to the Apple Music app. According to users on Reddit using the beta, you can now add and remove music from your drive with the same kind of swing gesture used in Apple’s Mail app to archive, delete or flag emails.

The full version of iOS 14.5 is also said to include several other useful add-ons, such as support for the new Xbox and PlayStation controllers, the ability to set Siri’s standard music service on Spotify, and the ability to charge your phone with your Apple Watch to unlock.

Update February 16, 20:30 ET: Added context about the new emoji and the changes to older emoji in iOS 14.5.