There's one place where you can already test drive all 239 new emoji
Can't wait for the massive emoji update coming later this year?
Good news: You can now start to take the 239 new emoji for a test drive -- on Twitter. The service rolled out support for the new characters, which include gems like broccoli, flying saucer, and "face with monocle."
In total, there are 56 entirely brand new characters (gender and skin tone variations account for the other 183). As we previously detailed, the new characters -- al part of Unicode's 10.0 release -- are pretty random.
There are nine new "face" emoji, including "face with hand over mouth," "star struck," and "crazy face." Meanwhile, "exploding head," "face with symbols," and "shushing face" should be right at home on Twitter.
Additionally, there are six new people emoji, including breastfeeding mother and "woman with headscarf," which was originally proposed by a 15-year-old girl from Saudi Arabia.
There are also six new animal characters, which include a zebra, a giraffe, a (very cute) hedgehog, two different dinosaurs and -- for some reason -- a cricket.
Other notable additions include 14 new "fantasy" characters: witches, wizards, mermaids (and mermen), fairies, elves genies, vampires, and zombies (we all need to up our Halloween emoji game anyway, right?)
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As with most major emoji releases, the update also makes a few smaller changes to existing emoji as well. You can read all about them, and every other new emoji, over on Emojipedia's website.
You can check out all the new characters now on Twitter. Unfortunately, the new characters are for now limited to Twitter's website as other major platforms have yet to add support for the update.
Facebook is set to roll out the new emoji "soon," according to Emojipedia, and Google confirmed last week that the new characters will be part of Android O when it launches later this year. Apple will very likely add support with the next version of iOS as well, though that hasn't been officially confirmed.
Topics Social Media X/Twitter
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.
