Apple iOS 18.4 Emoji Changelog

Today Apple has officially debuted 8 new emoji designs within iOS 18.4, bringing the likes of a paint splatter, a harp, and a face with bags under its eyes to iPhones, iPads, and all other Apple devices across the world. Plus, Genmoji in the EU and a redesigned Syrian flag emoji.

Keith Broni

• 5 min read
Apple iOS 18.4 Emoji Changelog

Apple has officially introduced eight new emoji designs in iOS 18.4, including a paint splatter, a harp, and a face with bags under its eyes, now available on eligible iPhones, iPads, and other Apple devices worldwide This update also launches the "Genmoji" feature within the European Union and redesigns the Syrian flag emoji.

The same eight new emojis are also included as part of iPadOS 18.4, tvOS 18.4, watchOS 11.4, and macOS 15.4.

This update also changed the design of a single flag emoji, which we discuss further below.

🆕 New in iOS 18.4

As previewed with the release of the second iOS 18.4 beta back in February, the eight new emojis in iOS 18.4 are as follows:

The new emojis in today's release are drawn from Unicode's September 2024 list of recommendations: Emoji 16.0.

While design revisions have been known to happen during the beta period, no changes were made to the designs of these eight new emojis between iOS 18.4 beta 2 and their official release today.

In 2023, the 🧌 Troll emoji was revised during the iOS 15.4 beta period, while previous beta testing periods featured revisions (or attempted revisions) to the 🥯 Bagel and 🍑 Peach emojis.

This update did, however, change the design of one emoji available before the release of iOS 18.4.

🆕 Changed in iOS 18.4

Today's release of iOS 18.4 changes the design of the 🇸🇾 Flag: Syria emoji to the nation's new de facto flag.

Apple is the first emoji vendor to update the Syrian flag emoji following the fall of the Assad regime on December 8, 2024.

This emoji design change has been widely requested since that date.

This flag design—a horizontal triband of green, white, and black with three red five-pointed stars on the white band—was first used between 1930 and 1958 (officially adopted in 1946) and regained popularity as a symbol of opposition to the Assad regime from 2006 onwards.

While several emoji flag designs have changed in the past, those changes have tended to follow democratic processes. You can learn more here in our article discussing if and when the 🇸🇾 Flag: Syria emoji would have its design changed.

Notably, this is the first time an emoji flag design has been changed following a regime change in a country.

Additionally and importantly, this design change will be applied retroactively to any instances of this emoji being rendered in iOS 18.4, even if the message was written before today.

Unicode does not support what it deems historical flags, which rules having different flag choices for each country based on earlier designs. 

Therefore, users will need to note the date and time that a message or post was written to best ascertain the intention of the author at that time.

🇨🇶 The Flag for Sark?

The inclusion of the 🇨🇶 Flag for Sark in the Emoji 16.0 list of recommendations has caused some confusion among users.

Admittedly, even those who follow emoji news closely may be confused by the inclusion.

This may be largely because in March of 2022 Unicode announced that it would no longer be accepting proposals for "flag emoji of any category"—or perhaps otherwise because Sark only has a population of about 500 people.

Despite the recommendation of the 🇨🇶 Flag for Sark, this Unicode policy regarding flag emoji proposals remains in force.

However, at the time of this policy's announcement, Unicode did highlight how further national/regional flags could come into existence in that same blog post:

The Unicode Consortium isn’t in the business of determining what is a country and what isn’t. That’s when the Consortium chose ISO 3166-1 alpha 2 as the source for valid country designations. ISO 3166 is a widely-accepted standard, and this particular mechanism represents each country with 2 letters, such as “US” (For United States), “FR” (France), or “CN” (China).

It is through this policy of representing regions with two-letter ISO codes that the 🇨🇶 Flag for Sark came into being.

In February 2020, Sark received an “exceptionally reserved” ISO 3166 code of CQ within ISO 3166-1, paving the way for it to obtain its own emoji flag recommended for general interchange (RGI) without requiring a formal proposal.

This is the first time a new national/regional flag emoji has been added through this automatic recommendation mechanism since emoji flags were first formally approved in Emoji 1.0 back in 2015 (select flags had existed on Apple devices since 2008, but were not recommended by Unicode until 2015).

(What about the 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 England, 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scotland, and 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Wales, you may ask? These nations don't have an ISO 3166 code, and yet they are included within the emoji keyboard through emoji tag sequences that were implemented based on an approved 2016 proposal.)

📲 Release

iOS 18.4 is available now as a free software update for the following Apple devices:

  • iPhone 15 / iPhone 16 Pro/ iPhone 16e
  • iPhone 15 / iPhone 15 Plus / iPhone 15 Pro / iPhone 15 Pro Max
  • iPhone 14 / iPhone 14 Plus / iPhone 14 Pro / iPhone 14 Pro Max
  • iPhone 13 / iPhone 13 mini / iPhone 13 Pro / iPhone 13 Pro Max
  • iPhone 12 / iPhone 12 mini / iPhone 12 Pro / iPhone 12 Pro Max
  • iPhone 11 / iPhone 11 Pro / iPhone 11 Pro Max
  • iPhone XS / iPhone XS Max
  • iPhone XR
  • iPhone SE (2nd generation or later)

As mentioned above, the same eight new emojis are also included as part of iPadOS 18.4 and are expected to be included in the release of tvOS 18.4, watchOS 11.4, and macOS 15.4.

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