Google outs new and animated Android emojis for the first time
Google just previewed the new round of Unicode 15.0 emojis that are coming to your Android handset via system updates in December. Of course, the Google Pixel phones will get them sooner, as they will be integrated into the stock AOSP Android in the next few weeks.
The new Unicode 15 emojis are 31 and include animal gems like black bird, donkey, moose, goose, or jellyfish, as well as the highly requested pink heart along with new heart colors. There are a number of skin color versions of a Rightwards Pushing Hand and Leftwards Pushing Hand as well as a hair pick, maracas, and a khanda Sikh symbol.
The 4,489 new characters in #Unicode15 include 20 new #emoji, along with new emoji sequences, expected to show up on s, s, and other platforms sometime next year → https://t.co/92bPON11bP#絵文字pic.twitter.com/Tk9cyV1SXo
— The Unicode Consortium (@unicode) September 6, 2022
Animated Android emojis
For the first time, however, Google is offering animated emojis that are versions of the static ones it already offers in its Android library, or releasing the ones available in its messaging app for general use:
While emoji are almost unrecognizable today from what they were in the late 1990's, there are some things I miss about the original emoji sets from Japan. Notably, the animation. Just as language doesn’t stand still, neither do emoji. Say hello to our first set of animations!
Scan the collection, download in your preferred file format, and watch them dance. You may have already seen a few in the Messages by Google app which supports these today. The artwork is available under the CC BY 4.0 license.
Scan the collection, download in your preferred file format, and watch them dance. You may have already seen a few in the Messages by Google app which supports these today. The artwork is available under the CC BY 4.0 license.
How to use Emoji Kitchen to customize emojis
The other cool trick you can do with the upcoming new set of emojis is customize them to your liking. The pink heart was voted the most requested new emoji on social media and Google obliges, but it also is just a shade of an existing emoji.
"What if changing the color of an emote happened with the simple click of a button and didn’t require the Unicode Consortium, responsible for digitizing the world’s languages, to do a cross-linguistic study of color terms to add three new colored hearts," asked Google.
Instead of wondering, however, it simply gives us the option for making custom emojis via the Emoji Kitchen in Google's keyboard. Adding a colored heart to an emoji sequence will change the hue of the original, and Google gives an example with a lemon followed by a green heart that turns the lemon into lime if you can't find a lime emoji handy.
Pretty cool, as now you can turn everything pink. Here's how to use Emoji Kitchen on Gboard:
- Go to the Emoji, Stickers & GIFs in Gboard.
- Turn on Suggestions while typing > Emojis.
- In a supported app (Twitter, Instagram, Google Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn and others) tap two emojis in a sequence to get a new one.
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