iOS 13.2 Emojis
The accessibility set reaches the iPhone
What emoji did iOS 13.2 add?
iOS 13.2 shipped in October 2019 and brought the Emoji 12.0 and 12.1 sets, including the accessibility emoji that Apple itself had proposed to Unicode: the guide dog ๐ฆฎ, probing cane ๐ฆฏ, manual and motorised wheelchairs ๐ฆฝ๐ฆผ, and the Deaf Person ๐ง. It is the clearest example of a vendor pushing the standard somewhere it had not been.
At a glance
| Shipped | |
|---|---|
| Platform | Apple iOS |
| Emoji version implemented | Emoji 12.1 |
| Emoji added | 168 |
The emoji iOS 13.2 is remembered for
How to get these emoji
Emoji ship inside the system font, so there is no separate download and nothing to enable.
- Open Settings, then General, then Software Update.
- Install iOS 13.2 or any later version.
- Open any keyboard and tap the emoji button. The new characters are already in the picker.
If you send one of these to somebody on an older release, they see a blank box. The character transmits correctly either way, and appears as soon as they update.
The standard behind this release
Emoji 12.1 arrived on 29 October 2019 with 168 new emoji and no new characters behind them. Almost the whole release is gender-neutral forms of people who had previously shipped only as a man or a woman: ๐งโโ๏ธ health worker, ๐งโ๐ซ teacher, ๐งโ๐ astronaut and the rest, plus neutral hair variants. Unicode 12.1 itself, published five months earlier, added exactly one character, and it was not an emoji.
Read the full Unicode 12.1 recordFrequently Asked Questions
Which iOS added the accessibility emoji?
iOS 13.2, in October 2019. Apple proposed the set to Unicode in partnership with accessibility organisations, then shipped it once Emoji 12.0 was ratified. It remains the largest inclusivity change since skin-tone modifiers.
What is the difference between ๐ค and ๐ค?
๐ค is the pinching hand, thumb and forefinger close together to mean a small amount, and arrived in iOS 13.2. ๐ค is pinched fingers, the Italian gesture with all fingertips together, and came a year later in iOS 14.2.
Did iOS 13.2 add mixed skin tone couples?
Yes. Emoji 12.0 introduced sequences letting each person in a couple or handshake emoji carry a different skin tone, and iOS 13.2 was the release that made them render on iPhone.