The version most emoji databases get wrong
Unicode 10.0 was published on 20 June 2017 and added 56 emoji, including the star-struck face ๐คฉ, the exploding head ๐คฏ, the face with monocle ๐ง and the love-you gesture ๐ค. It is also the version that causes the most data errors anywhere online, because many widely-copied emoji datasets have no 10.0 bucket at all and silently file these characters under 11.0 instead.
| Released | |
|---|---|
| New emoji characters | 56 |
| Total including sequences | 56 |
If you see ๐คฉ, ๐คฏ, ๐ง, ๐คซ, ๐ง , ๐ฆ, ๐ฅฆ, ๐ง or ๐ค described as a 2018 emoji, the source is working from a dataset with the 10.0 gap. They are all from June 2017.
Unicode publishing a standard and your phone drawing the emoji are two separate events, usually months apart. These are the releases that added support.
| Platform | Added in | When |
|---|---|---|
| Apple | iOS 11.1 | October 2017 |
| Android 8.1 Oreo | December 2017 | |
| Samsung | Experience 9.0 | 2018 |
Excitement and admiration. One of the most-used faces added in the 2010s.
Mind blown. Adopted almost instantly and never faded.
Scrutiny, usually performed rather than sincere.
Secrets and quiet. Pairs naturally with ๐คญ.
Polite shock or a stifled laugh.
Deliberate silliness, with the lopsided eyes doing the work.
Censored swearing, the comic-strip convention made official.
Intelligence and thinking. Very commonly mislabelled as a 2018 emoji.
The American Sign Language sign for I love you.
Completed the rainbow of heart colours available at the time.
One of several African animals added in this set.
Another long-standing gap in the animal set.
Small, popular, and heavily used by pet accounts.
Added with the T-Rex below, the first dinosaurs in the standard.
The more popular of the two by a wide margin.
Health food shorthand, and a frequent stand-in for vegetables generally.
Tropical food and drink.
German and American snack culture.
Part of a fantasy set that also brought the fairy, vampire, elf, genie and zombie.
Horror, exhaustion, and a staple of Halloween posts.
Gender-neutral from the start, unlike many earlier people emoji.
UFOs and anything inexplicable.
Later took on a second life as slang for lying.
Prayer, offering, and asking in several cultural contexts.
Because several widely-copied emoji datasets contain no 10.0 category and file every Unicode 10.0 character under 11.0 instead. The star-struck face, exploding head, brain, zebra, broccoli, mage and love-you gesture were all published in June 2017 as part of Unicode 10.0.
Fifty-six, published on 20 June 2017. Apple shipped them in iOS 11.1 that October, and Google followed in Android 8.1 in December.
๐ค is the American Sign Language sign for I love you, combining the letters I, L and Y in one handshape. It is distinct from the rock-on horns ๐ค, which keeps the thumb tucked in.
See what arrived most recently on our newest emoji page, check which characters people are using right now in trending emoji, or dig into the numbers in our emoji statistics.
Approval is only half the story. To see which iOS release actually put these on a phone, and when, see iOS emoji updates.