There are 230 new emoji on the way in 2019
Get ready to step up your emoji game.
Unicode just made its new emoji list for 2019 official, and the update adds 230 new symbols, including a yawning face, white heart, and pinching hand symbol.
Though the list of new emoji has now been finalized, it will still be several months before the update hits your phone. Unicode will release the update in March, but it will take some time after that for apps and operating systems to roll out support for the new characters. Updates will start hitting in April and continue through the end of the year, according to Emojipedia.
Emoji lovers can look forward to several new animal emoji, including sloth, otter, flamingo, orangutan, and skunk. There are also new food-themed emoji, including a waffle, butter, an onion, garlic, and a juice box.
Also making the cut: yawning face and "pinching hand."
Unicode is also streamlining some of its symbols, so now the heart, circle, and square emoji will all be available in a full rainbow of colors. Emojipedia notes the "white heart" symbol has been a popular request (the black heart was also a particularly popular addition back in 2016).
This year's crop is one of the most diverse emoji updates, with symbols representing a number of different cultures. Among them include the sari, a Hindu Temple, falafel, maté, and the Diya Lamp emoji. There are also 70 new combinations for the "couple holding hands" emoji, to ensure that all couples can be represented in every skin tone.
The update also adds more than a dozen emoji that represent members of the Deaf and Blind communities and people with disabilities. The characters, which were proposed last year by Apple, include people in manual and mechanized wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, and service dogs. Unicode also added four additional symbols that weren't in Apple's original proposal: standalone characters for probing cane, mechanized and manual wheelchairs, as well as a gender-inclusive "deaf person" emoji.
You can read more about every single new emoji over on Emojipedia.
Karissa was Mashable's Senior Tech Reporter, and is based in San Francisco. She covers social media platforms, Silicon Valley, and the many ways technology is changing our lives. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Macworld, Popular Mechanics, and The Wirecutter. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding and watching too many cat videos on Instagram. Follow her on Twitter @karissabe.
