iOS 17.4 Emojis
A huge count made almost entirely of directions
What emoji did iOS 17.4 add?
iOS 17.4 arrived in March 2024 with the Emoji 15.1 set. The number looks enormous at 118, and almost none of it is new subject matter. The bulk is directional variants: existing walking, running and kneeling people that can now face left or right, plus a set of family emoji redrawn as simplified silhouettes. The one genuinely new drawing is the phoenix.
At a glance
| Shipped | |
|---|---|
| Platform | Apple iOS |
| Emoji version implemented | Emoji 15.1 |
| Emoji added | 118 |
The emoji iOS 17.4 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 17.4 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 15.1 was published on 12 September 2023 alongside Unicode 15.1, and it is the oddest entry in this list: 118 new emoji built from zero new code points. Every addition is a sequence, meaning existing characters joined with a zero-width joiner so vendors draw them as one image. The phoenix ๐ฆโ๐ฅ is a bird joined to fire. The lime ๐โ๐ฉ is a lemon joined to a green square. Most of the count is people who can finally face right instead of left.
Read the full Unicode 15.1 recordFrequently Asked Questions
Why did iOS 17.4 add 118 emoji that look like ones I already had?
Emoji 15.1 was mostly about direction. Walking, running and wheelchair emoji previously only faced one way, so each gained a right-facing sequence. Useful for showing movement in a thread, but it inflates the count without adding new subjects.
What is the bird on fire emoji?
๐ฆโ๐ฅ is the phoenix, built as a sequence combining the bird with fire. It was the standout genuinely new addition in this release, and it renders as a single mythological bird rather than two separate emoji on any device that supports it.
Why is the lime emoji green lemon code?
๐โ๐ฉ is a sequence joining the lemon to a green square, which is how Unicode added a lime without encoding a whole new character. On an older device that does not understand the sequence it falls back to showing a lemon and a green square side by side.