Emoji Redesigns That Changed What They Meant

Emoji redesigns usually go unnoticed, but a handful have changed what an emoji actually says. The biggest is 🔫: Apple swapped a revolver for a green water pistol in 2016, every major vendor followed by 2018, and the character's official short name in Unicode's CLDR data now reads "water pistol". Below is a dated changelog of the redesigns that shifted a meaning or started a public argument, each with its source.

We only kept entries we could pin to a month and a credible report. A few popular stories, like Samsung's odd early 🍜 and 🍪 art, didn't make it because we couldn't find a dated source we trusted.

The changelog, oldest first

1. April 2016. University of Minnesota GroupLens researchers publish a study showing people read Apple's 😁 as anything from a happy grin to a hostile grimace.
2. August 2016. Apple announces that iOS 10 will draw 🔫 as a toy water pistol. Days later Microsoft moves the other way, from a ray gun to a realistic revolver on Windows 10.
3. Summer 2016. Apple's iOS 10 developer betas redraw 😁 so it no longer looks like gritted teeth.
4. Late 2016. Apple rounds off 🍑 in the iOS 10.2 beta, users complain, and the familiar shape comes back in beta 3.
5. May to August 2017. Google announces and then ships the end of its "blob" faces in Android 8.0 Oreo.
6. October to November 2017. A tweet about Google's 🍔 cheese placement reaches Sundar Pichai; the Android 8.1 developer preview fixes the burger and the floating foam on 🍺.
7. Spring 2018. Samsung, Google, Twitter and Facebook switch 🔫 to water pistols.
8. June 2018. Google removes the egg from 🥗.
9. October 2018. Apple adds cream cheese to 🥯 before the emoji ships.
10. February 2021. The iOS 14.5 beta drains the blood out of 💉, turning it into a vaccine emoji.
11. July 2024. X restores a realistic handgun for 🔫.
12. August 2026. Google's Noto 3D set on the Pixel 11 stops drawing 🥒 as a pickle and cuts 🥀 down to a single falling petal.

🔫 Pistol to water pistol, and back again on X

The water pistol emoji is the clearest case of art changing meaning. It came from Japanese carrier sets and entered Unicode 6.0 in 2010 as a handgun. For six years most phones showed a revolver, and the emoji turned up in threats serious enough to reach courtrooms.

On 1 August 2016, Engadget reported that Apple's iOS 10 would replace it with a bright green squirt gun. Apple never gave a public reason, though the change landed two months after The Guardian reported Apple had pushed back on a proposed rifle emoji. Microsoft did the opposite within days, Engadget reported, turning its Windows 10 sci-fi ray gun into a real revolver. For a while the same message showed a toy on one phone and a weapon on a laptop.

The holdouts gave in during 2018. The Verge reported Twitter's switch in April 2018, after the Parkland school shooting, and Samsung, Google and Facebook made the same move that spring. Then, in July 2024, X brought back a realistic handgun. Emojipedia covered the reversal on 23 July 2024, days after Elon Musk posted about it.

So a 🔫 sent from an iPhone today can land on X as a real gun. Sender and reader may honestly disagree about what was said.

😁 The grin that read as a grimace

In April 2016 a GroupLens team at the University of Minnesota published "Blissfully happy" or "ready to fight": Varying Interpretations of Emoji. Fortune's write-up that month said participants disagreed about whether an emoji was positive, negative or neutral roughly a quarter of the time. The title came from one character, U+1F601. Google's version read as friendly. Apple's toothy version looked, to many people, like a clenched grimace.

That matters because a separate grimacing face emoji 😬 already existed (it joined Emoji 1.0 in 2015). Apple's 😁 sat uncomfortably close to it. MacStories noticed in the iOS 10 developer beta 4, that summer, that the face "no longer looks like someone gritting their teeth". Emojipedia's entry notes that before 2017 Apple's design resembled 😬.

The name moved too. The Unicode character name is still GRINNING FACE WITH SMILING EYES, because Unicode never changes character names once published. But the CLDR short name, the one keyboards search and screen readers speak, is now "beaming face with smiling eyes", which is how our beaming face page lists it.

🍑 The peach Apple tried to make more peach-like

The peach emoji is a 2010 character whose cleft made it the internet's default bum. In the first iOS 10.2 beta Apple redrew it rounder and flatter, more like fruit. The reaction was loud enough that tech sites covered the complaints as news.

On 15 November 2016 TechCrunch reported that beta 3 had brought the cheeky shape back. TechCrunch's take was that Apple had the peach redrawn again rather than simply restoring the old file. Either way, the outcome is the interesting part. Apple tried to remove a slang meaning by changing the art, and the users who relied on that meaning stopped it. The fruit reading never won.

Google retires the blobs in 2017

Not every meaning shift involves one emoji. At Google I/O in May 2017, Google announced that every one of its emoji was being redrawn and that its blob characters, a look Emojipedia traced back to 2013, would go. Android 8.0 Oreo shipped the round replacements on 21 August 2017.

The blobs were expressive but notoriously off-model. Their faces did not always read like Apple's, which is the root problem our post on why emoji look different on iPhone and Android covers in detail. Swapping a whole set for circular faces closer to other vendors reduced the number of messages that changed tone in transit. It also cost Android a design many people loved, and the announcement was greeted with genuine mourning.

🍔 and 🍺: when the art broke physics

On 28 October 2017, writer Thomas Baekdal tweeted that Google's hamburger emoji placed the cheese under the patty, while Apple put it on top. Sundar Pichai replied that he would "drop everything else we are doing and address on Monday" if people could agree on the correct order. Nobody fully agreed, which was half the fun.

Engadget reported on 28 November 2017 that the Android 8.1 developer preview had moved the cheese. The same build fixed the beer mug emoji, whose foam had been floating above the liquid with a gap underneath. At Google I/O in May 2018, Pichai joked on stage that he didn't want to repeat the team's explanation for the floating foam, Dezeen reported.

Neither fix changed what the emoji meant. We include them because they show who gets to decide: a single viral complaint was enough to move artwork used on billions of devices.

Diet politics: 🥗 loses its egg, 🥯 gains a schmear

The green salad emoji joined Emoji 3.0 in 2016. In June 2018 Jennifer Daniel, then leading Google's emoji design, announced that Android P Beta 2 had dropped the egg, calling the result a more inclusive vegan salad. Replies ranged from cheering to mockery. Daniel later pointed out that the change also brought the art closer to Unicode's own description of the character, which mentions lettuce, tomato and cucumber but no egg.

Four months later it was Apple's turn. The bagel emoji is an Emoji 11.0 character from 2018, and Apple's first draft in the iOS 12.1 beta was a plain, dry roll. Emojipedia reported in October 2018 that beta 4 added a layer of cream cheese and a more textured crust. The emoji had not even shipped to the public yet. That is how fast a design can be pulled back when people care about a food.

💉 From blood test to vaccine in 2021

The syringe emoji dates to 2010, and Apple's version was full of red liquid with blood drops, the picture of a blood draw. In February 2021, during the first big COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the iOS 14.5 beta showed a clear, unbloodied syringe instead.

Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge told CNN Business the change made the emoji "more versatile" and might remove the misconception that vaccination involves blood. He also noted it still works for blood donation. Apple didn't comment publicly. iOS 14.5 shipped to everyone in April 2021, and 💉 has been the default vaccine emoji ever since.

This is the cleanest case on the list of art tracking usage. People were already using 💉 for vaccines in 2020; Apple redrew it to match what they meant.

2026: Noto 3D redraws 🥒 and 🥀

The newest entry is two months old. Emojipedia reported on 21 August 2026 that Google's Noto 3D set went live with the Pixel 11 the day before. Most changes are about rendering, flat gradients giving way to lit, volumetric shapes, which we cover in our post on Google's Noto 3D emoji.

A few are real redesigns. Google's cucumber emoji is no longer drawn as a pickle, which matters to anyone who used it for pickles specifically. The wilted flower now drops a single petal, a sharper image of loss that suits how people already use it for heartbreak (our wilted rose meaning guide covers that shift). 🤭 now shows the smile beneath the hand, nudging it towards giggling rather than shock.

Emojipedia also says the set is still rolling out to other Pixel devices and Google products, so expect Android users to see a mix for a while.

When the name follows the picture

Here is the pattern that most changelogs miss. Unicode treats character names as permanent. Officially, U+1F52B remains PISTOL. U+1F601 keeps its original formal label too, and neither will ever be renamed.

But Unicode also publishes a second, softer name through its Common Locale Data Repository. The CLDR short name is what keyboards show in search and what VoiceOver, TalkBack and other screen readers say out loud. That name can be revised, and for these two it was:

• 🔫 U+1F52B: character name PISTOL, CLDR short name "water pistol". Wikipedia's article on the emoji cites the CLDR annotations file dated June 2022 for this name; we could not confirm the exact year it was first adopted.
• 😁 U+1F601: character name GRINNING FACE WITH SMILING EYES, CLDR short name "beaming face with smiling eyes".

In both cases the vendors' art moved first and the standard's everyday label moved afterwards. The catalog behind this site follows the CLDR names, which is why it lists 🔫 as a water pistol. A blind user hearing "water pistol" and a sighted X user seeing a handgun are now receiving two different messages from one code point.

What this means when you hit send

You choose the code point. The reader's platform chooses the picture. Most of the redesigns above reduced confusion, by moving vendors closer together, but the 🔫 reversal on X shows it can go the other way at any time.

Three practical habits follow. If an emoji carries the whole message, add a word. If you are unsure what the other side sees, check the vendor gallery on our Apple emoji page or our Google emoji page. For the longer story of how these sets drifted apart, the history of emojis guide and the emoji evolution timeline both pick up where this changelog leaves off.