If you were looking for reasons to get excited about Apple’s first major update for iOS 12, Apple just offered up more than 70 of them. On Tuesday, Apple revealed that iOS 12.1 will bring with it over 70 new emoji characters, from smiley faces and animals to sports and food. Apple adds to its collection of thousands of emoji on a fairly frequent basis, and while not everything from the latest Unicode standard makes the cut, a healthy percentage do.
Some of the characters that made the cut (which you can see scrolling in the GIF at the top of the post) include bald people, a face surrounded by hearts, a hiking boot, a moon cake, a softball, a skateboard, a frisbee, a salt shaker, a bagel, lettuce, and some new animals like a raccoon, a swan, a llama, and a mosquito.
Don’t Miss: Apple’s latest iOS version iOS 17 has been announced.
We don’t know when exactly to expect the final release of iOS 12.1, but iOS 11.1 launched on October 31st last year, while 10.1 hit on October 24th the year before. It seems likely that iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch users will gain access to the software update in the second half of the month, but if you simply can’t wait, you can always download the latest iOS 12.1 public beta, which we explain how to do in detail right here.
“Thousands of emoji are currently available on iOS, watchOS and macOS, including emotive smiley faces, gender-neutral characters, various clothing options, food types, animals, mythical creatures and more,” Apple explains. “New emoji characters are created based on the approved characters in Unicode 11.0. Apple is working with the Unicode Consortium to add more disability-themed emoji to the keyboard for Unicode 12.0, slated for release in 2019.”
