A Timeline of Twemoji: 2014 - 2025

Twitter’s custom emoji set is just over a decade old, but it’s seen a lifetime’s worth of updates, upgrades, and major milestones, even before recent paradigm-rattling developments for the former “Bird App” led to two parallel versions of the set.

David Doochin

• 12 min read
A Timeline of Twemoji: 2014 - 2025

If you’ve spent any time online in the past decade, you’ve likely come across the website once known as Twitter, now of course called X. But even more widespread than the platform itself are the emojis it helped bring into the mainstream.

Above: Twemoji was launched in 2014 as an open-source emoji project that can be used within other apps.

Originally created for clarity and accessibility, Twitter’s custom emoji set, known as Twemoji, became widely recognized for its clean, flat aesthetic.

Thanks to its open-source Creative Commons license, Twemoji also quickly spread beyond Twitter. You can find it on platforms like Discord (which we’ll explore more later), Roblox, in the Firefox browser on Windows for flag emojis, and even in print and video advertisements.

As part of our World Emoji Day 2025 celebrations and to coincide with the relaunch of the once-Twitter-powered EmojiTracker.com, we’re taking a look back at the ten-plus-year history of the Twemoji design set and its lasting influence.

🐣 Twemoji Origins

Though emojis first became standardized with the release of Unicode 6.0 in 2010, when Twitter was almost 4 years old, the birth of the custom Twemoji set for Twitter didn’t happen until Twemoji 1.0 went public in November 2014.

At its launch, the original Twemoji set of 874 emojis was designed to be an open-source project created and owned by Twitter and housed on GitHub, meaning that anyone would be able to access and distribute all the emojis easily and for free. (The set even came with a now-defunct open-source Twemoji site, which since 2024 you can only access in the Internet Archive.) 

Designed in collaboration with the Iconfactory, the set featured a more visually distinct and consistent two-dimensional, bold style with a simple but coherent color palette free of gradients or gloss, setting it apart from the more depth-defined, detailed emojis from vendors like Apple and Google or even Facebook a few years later. 

The earliest of Twitter’s emoji set updates, mostly throughout the post-Twemoji-launch 2010s, tended to stay largely in line with other major developments in the emoji world, especially centered around Unicode releases of new emoji recommendations. 

We’ll put them all into context in the rest of this article, but you can see the timeline of the more than 30 Twemoji updates since 2014 here as well as a record of all the Twemojis that currently exist. As we’ll discuss later in this article, there have been no major updates to Twemoji since 2023, though there is a standalone open-source Twemoji project created by former Twitter staff and Discord design team members. 

Let’s dive deeper into the major and noteworthy moments on the Twemoji timeline since 2014 that have shaped Twitter’s legacy in the emoji landscape.

Earliest Updates

After the initial Twemoji debut, Twitter’s first big rollout of Twemoji upgrades came in late 2015, when the site added 787 new emoji characters in Twemoji 2.0 to reflect emojis released in Unicode 7.0 and Unicode 8.0.

This new batch included a massive increase in the number of emoji-represented flags from 10 to 257, including flags for all countries recognized in the ISO 3166-1 standard. 

These new flags were a significant chunk of the emojis responsible for filling out the ranks of the nearly 800 emojis added in Twemoji 2.0, but they weren’t alone; they got a lot of help from the distinct emoji creations that were born when certain emojis combined with modifiers—and even other emojis—to open up a whole new set of representation possibilities.

🎅🏿 ADDING VARIATION WITH MODIFIERS AND ZWIDGES

Among the most significant updates in Twemoji 2.0 was support for skin tone modifiers, with the vendor opting for orange hair for the default yellow-face people-looking emojis.

This was a feature unique to Twitter that set it apart from other vendors like Apple, with its signature yellow-hair-with-yellow-people default pairings seen in emojis like 👩 Woman, and like Microsoft, which opted for black or brown hair for neutral-skinned person emojis. 

Above: a selection of family emojis in Twemoj 2.0, shown with red hair by default.

Twemoji 2.0 also saw support for implementations of zero-width joiner (ZWJ, or “zwidge”) sequences, which allowed users to combine existing emojis recommended by Unicode with a special character called a zero-width joiner to create new variations.

🍔 MID-STAGE TWEMOJI UPDATES: 2016-2018

After Unicode released its first dedicated emoji documentation with Emoji 1.0 in 2015, which encompassed all the emojis approved from 2010 to 2015, Twemoji updates in the following several years kept mostly in line with this and subsequent Unicode launches. 

Twemoji’s 2.3 rollout in May 2017 added support for the emojis approved by Unicode in Emoji 5.0, which made Twitter the first major vendor to support the integration of these characters, among them a whole novel selection of smileys, people, fantasy characters, activities, clothing, animals, food and drink, flags, and miscellaneous emojis. It also included some relatively minor design upgrades to emojis like the 👹 Ogre and the 🍔 Hamburger (which got a lettuce and tomato facelift), among dozens of others.

Subsequent rollouts made relatively small ripples. Twemoji 2.5 of early 2018, for example, featured minimal updates with no new characters—only, again, some tweaks to the appearances and orientation of several Twemojis, including the 💘 Heart with Arrow, for one, which saw its arrow direction flipped, and the 🦅 Eagle, which underwent a y-axis mirroring from facing right to left.

🔫 PULLING THE TRIGGER ON A PISTOL EMOJI CHANGE

It was only a few months later that headline-making Twemoji 2.6 followed, which reflected a change that had been happening in waves across the social media landscape, partly in response to growing outcry about gun violence in the United States.

Beginning with Apple in 2016, major vendors opted in 2018 to swap the Pistol emoji for the 🔫 Water Pistol, many citing concerns both about user safety and about problems in cross-platform communication and the need for emoji convergence, a trend starting to see a peak around that time.

With Twemoji 2.6 in April 2018, Twitter was among the first to follow Apple’s lead (shortly after Samsung’s February 2018 switch), with Google, Microsoft, and Facebook making their own changes or pledging to do so soon after.

The moves ignited significant controversy and backlash from more firearm-friendly sects of the internet and some of the media as a whole, who claimed that the move represented a caving to political pressure from gun control advocates. (Keep reading below to learn how Twitter, in its current status as X, made headlines again around the gun emoji debate in 2024)

🏘️ EMOJI DESIGN CONVERGENCE

Twemoji 2.7 in May 2018 saw changes to the design styles of some emojis to keep in line with the emoji convergence trajectory continuing to unfold; Twitter removed bounding frames like the blue sky behind emojis like the 🏘️ Houses and redesigned dozens of emojis that hadn’t been touched since Twemoji’s launch to more closely match those of other vendors—like switching the directionality of the ☂️ Umbrella from handle-right to handle-left and the updating the colors of other emojis like the 📊 Bar Chart, which once featured a purple bar instead of its now-blue.

🚀 LATER TWEMOJI UPDATES: 2018 AND AFTER

Twitter’s updates in the first few years of Twemoji history marked a commitment to keeping up with emerging trends in the emoji world, from the company’s quickness in integrating support for new Unicode batch emoji releases to its support for ZWJ functionality to its willingness to update its emoji designs to align with other vendors, all without sacrificing its own unique style where possible. The next few years saw some similar developments, with Twitter positioning itself in the emoji space as an innovator and industry leader, and one also not afraid to follow the flow when appropriate and strategic.

🤖 TWEMOJI ON ANDROID

Twitter made the switch in May 2018 to render Twemoji on Android, reversing its history of displaying each vendor’s native emoji set, like those of Google or Samsung on devices made by the respective companies. This move helped to reduce the amount of missing characters appearing on older systems and to bring Twemoji to more people on more devices around the globe. 

(An important note is that Apple devices have always used native Apple emojis in the Twitter app, though Twemoji render as Twemoji on the company’s website, no matter the device or browser.)

⏩ THE JUMP TO TWEMOJI 11.0

In June 2018, Twitter changed the numbering convention of Twemoji releases to synchronize with those of the Unicode, meaning that directly after Twemoji 2.7 came Twemoji 11.0, which featured the new emojis from, unsurprisingly, Unicode 11.0. 

Twemoji 11.0 was significant in that it was the first of the four Twemoji updates up to that point in 2018 to debut new emojis, and the quick rollout strengthened Twitter’s status as consistently one of the fastest platforms relative to its competitors to offer integration for Unicode releases. 

Twemoji 11.0 added 156 new emojis of the 157 approved by Unicode—the last being the just-recommended Pirate Flag, which had already existed as an emoji on Twitter in the form of the ZWJ sequence 🏴 Black Flag + ZWJ + ☠️ Skull and Crossbones mentioned above. 

💉 SYRINGE, REIMAGINED

Notable other developments of this era include the changing of the 💉 Syringe emoji in Twemoji 13.0.2 to better represent a vaccine during the Covid pandemic and the widespread global vaccination efforts starting largely in 2021. 

What once rendered on Twitter as a syringe filled with blood and dripping two droplets of it became a modified variation with an empty barrel and no droplets, giving the emoji more of the appearance of a general vaccine and Twitter users a stronger correlation to the real world in their online discourse about the Covid shot.

(It’s worth noting that Twitter wasn’t the only major vendor to implement the change in the design of the syringe’s contents; Google and Apple also announced they would do so earlier the same year.)

🪞 TEASING A TWEMOJI REDESIGN

The first part of 2021 also saw the introduction of glossy Twemoji stickers in select locations across Twitter, a comprehensive overhaul of Twitter’s original flat, block-color design schema to more closely match the styles of vendors like Apple and Facebook.

The more detailed and realistic three-dimensional graphics were expected to be released universally on the platform, but they were never made available within the Twemoji library to be used widely across the Twitter site or app.

They were, however, made accessible briefly within the Fleets feature before its discontinuation soon after in summer 2021, within the Twitter mobile image editor, in communications from the Twitter Design team, and within the Twitter Status feature.

You can access the entire set of Twitter glossy stickers on Emojipedia here, which includes characters up to the Emoji 13.1 recommendations of late 2020.  

🌇 THE LAST TWITTER UPDATE

After Twitter’s purchase and privatization in October 2022, which we explore briefly below, Twemoji 15.0 was the last major Unicode-synchronized update to the custom Twitter emoji set, rolling out the 31 emojis from Unicode’s Emoji 15.0 recommendations in June 2023.

Among the final emojis added to the Twemoji set were three colored hearts: the 🩷 Pink Heart, the 🩵 Light Blue Heart, and the 🩶 Grey Heart, the 🫨 Shaking Face, and the 🛜 Wireless emoji, to name a few.

Above: the last batch ofnew emojis added via Twemoji 15.0. Image: Twitter designs / Emojipedia composite.

At the time, many people couldn’t have known how or if the purchase of Twitter would have significant consequences for the company and the internet at large. Today, we can see a clearer picture of how users experience the emoji ecosystem on the platform and what open questions are left about the future.

✖️ TWITTER TODAY: THE MUSK ACQUISITION AND THE X TRANSITION

Those who follow world events and stay at least a little abreast of internet happenings likely know that the trajectory of Twitter took a drastic turn when billionaire Elon Musk purchased the company for $44 billion in October 2022.

By July 2023 Musk had overwhelmingly overhauled the social media platform, changing its name from Twitter to X, its logo from a graphic of a bird to the mathematical double-struck capital 𝕏, its brand color from blue to black, and a whole host of its policies around community, content, and verification.

Additionally, Musk fundamentally reorganized the internal structure of Twitter employees, laying off around 80 percent of the company’s workforce soon after the acquisition.

Whether because of a newfound shortage of designated team members to work on Twemoji, a deprioritization of projects that didn’t serve Musk’s goals, or some combination of both, official set updates to Twemoji were scrapped soon after the transition to Musk’s leadership, meaning the last significant release tied to a Unicode emoji release was in June 2023: Twemoji 15.0, as discussed above. 

Since then, only small tweaks have been made to existing Twemoji, including somewhat minor updates to the designs of the 😷 Face with Medical Mask, 🥺 Pleading Face, and 🥹 Face Holding Back Tears, and as many might remember, the 🔫 Pistol.

🔙 WATER PISTOL REVERSION

Perhaps the most significant update to the Twitter/X-native emoji set since Twemoji 15.0 concerned the 🔫 Pistol emoji, the centerpiece of the aforementioned cascade of design changes initiated by Apple in 2016 and adopted by other vendors largely in 2018.

In July 2024, X designers under Musk’s leadership changed the Water Pistol emoji back to a traditional handgun—a Colt M1911 pistol—reversing the company’s earlier decision to change the pistol to a squirt gun in line with Apple’s update.

The move gave rise to significant debate, adding ammunition to the already-existing culture wars not only around gun control and ownership but also around free speech, with some criticizing the move and others celebrating it.

The design of the Pistol was again updated in August 2024, giving it a more metal aesthetic with two rivets, and, as of today, there have been no further changes to the gun emoji, or any emojis on the platform, for that matter.

🤔 THE LEGACY AND THE FUTURE OF TWEMOJI

One pattern that has become obvious is that Musk and his team seem uninterested in continuing the Twemoji project, at least for the time being, and in some cases have even worked to dismantle its presence online. 

In February 2023, Twemojis were discontinued from Twitter/X on all mobile devices and replaced by each device’s native emoji designs.

This meant that Twitter for Android was no longer supported on Android devices, which from that point on showed either the Google Noto Color Emoji set or the Samsung emoji design set, depending on the device manufacturer. (It bears repeating that on Twitter and now X, Apple emojis have always displayed as such on Apple mobile devices.)

And, as mentioned earlier, since January 2024, the dedicated Twemoji website is no longer in operation, accessible only in internet archives.

But the Twemoji set isn’t scrubbed from the internet. Though it’s no longer being updated by a dedicated team within X, the set lives on in the Twitter/X website (twitter.com and x.com, respectively), X Pro (formerly TweetDeck), Discord, Roblox, and other apps.

👾 GITHUB OFFSHOOT & DISCORD SUPPORT

Since October 2022, a separate Twemoji open-source project has been maintained on the GitHub of former Twemoji designer Justine De Caires, featuring contributions made by designers from Discord, which has led to the preservation and continuation of the original goals of the Twemoji set.

Discord adopted the Twemoji design in December 2023 for its emojis and introduced support for Emoji 15.0 that went beyond the designs implemented in the Twitter/X Emoji 15.0 support release in June 2023. 

The April 2025 Discord 16.0.1 update included support for all the characters approved in Emoji 16.0 in 2024 and a new version of the 🇸🇾 Flag of Syria, a flag emoji that got a lot of attention in and after the country’s regime change in December 2024, prompting users to call for a design update. (The flag emoji remains in its older, two-starred Syrian Arab Republic variation on X)

As of July 2025, the status of Twemoji within X remains uncertain. With no official updates for Unicode recommendations since mid-2023 and the removal of the Twemoji website, the project appears to have been fully discontinued.

However, the original set's open-source nature has allowed others to continue its development and integration, as has been the case with Discord, and we here at Emojipeid hope that this continues to be the case long into the future.