Top Emoji Requests 2018

Jeremy Burge

• 3 min read
Top Emoji Requests 2018

With 157 new emojis arriving this year we now look ahead to 2019. Which emojis have been most requested in the past 12 months?

One of the most requested this year is the addition of a white heart emoji. This would complement the 🖤 Black Heart of 2016 and the 🧡 Orange Heart of 2017.

Other popular requests include more representation for people with disabilities, some previously-available smileys, and a frequent request: a version (or versions) of the family emoji with a dark skin tone. Statistics come from a range of sources including social media requests, emails, and search data.[1]

In no particular order, here is a compilation of the top requests for 2018.[2]

Smileys

  • "Grinning Grimace" (usually referring to this emoji previously on iOS)
  • Shy / bashful

smiles-gestures
Above: Popular requests for new emojis. Images L-R: Apple, Emojipedia, MSN Messenger.

Hand Gestures

  • Fingers together (aka "why you no")
  • "Kissy chef"[3]

People

  • Salute or person in the armed forces
  • Person using wheelchair
  • White skin / brown hair combination
  • Jumping
  • Black families (relevant)[4]
  • Running / walking in the opposite direction (aka reversible emojis)

black-family-emojis-emojipedia
Above: Black families are frequently requested. Image: Apple / Emojipedia Composite.

Food drink

  • White wine
  • Dark beer
  • Takeaway coffee
  • Candy cane
  • Mate
  • BBQ / grill
  • Durian

Activities

  • Rollerblades / Rollerskates
  • Flute
  • Clarinet

Animals

  • Flamingo
  • Sloth
  • Triceratops
  • Dog faces (matching the cat faces 😹😻😼😽🙀😿😾)

flamingo-triceratops-emojipedia
Above: Flamingo and Triceratops came up as wanted emojis in 2018. Images: Emojipedia.

Symbols

  • WiFi symbol
  • White Heart[5]

heart-emojis-emojipedia
Above: White Heart (right) is a highly popular emoji. Image: Apple / Emojipedia composite.

Flags

  • Transgender Flag
  • Catalonia Flag
  • Kurdistan Flag
  • Aboriginal Australian Flag

Other

  • Drone
  • Tumbleweed
  • Countryside
  • Disco Ball (a common request over multiple years)

Filtered from this list of emoji requests are copyrighted brands, logos, and individuals which are not eligible for encoding within the Unicode Standard.

Already Approved

Last year published a similar list of top emoji requests for 2017 which reported many entries that went on to be approved as part of Emoji 11.0. These include:

View the 157 new emojis approved for release in 2018.

  1. It's worth noting that Emojipedia itself is not responsible for approving new emojis (that's the job of the Unicode Consortium) but we do get plenty of feedback from our six million unique monthly visitors. ↩︎

  2. Some entries may be the result of multiple similar types of requests, attempting to minimize duplication in the list. ↩︎

  3. As seen in this sticker pack by illustrator Jen Lewis ↩︎

  4. "White Families" are almost never requested, possibly due to the default-yellow skin tone being much closer to white than black. Mixed race families and couples come up on occassion too, though "black family emoji" is the most requested of this type. ↩︎

  5. Notably, we've seen a big increase in lookups for the white heart suit emoji which is only supported as an emoji on Windows right now (and isn't white!) ↩︎