Today Apple has previewed its latest batch of Unicode emojis as part of the second iOS 18.4 beta.

This update introduces nine new emojis to the standard emoji keyboard on iOS, shown above and listed below.

• 🫩 Face with Bags Under Eyes
• 🫆 Fingerprint
• 🫟 Splatter
• 🫜 Root Vegetable
• 🪾 Leafless Tree
• 🪉 Harp
• 🪏 Shovel
• 🇨🇶 Flag: Sark

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

Interestingly, while iOS 18.4 beta 2 introduces support for these emojis, they are not yet included within the Apple emoji keyboard's categories (e.g. smileys, objects, symbols). They do, however, appear when search terms are used within the keyboard's search functionality.

Additionally, iOS 18.4 beta 2 also updated the design for the 🇸🇾 Flag: Syria emoji to the nation's new de facto flag.

The first iOS 18.4 beta was released just over a week ago and debuted access to Apple Intelligence for European Union (EU) countries. This first beta therefore allowed for EU users to access Genmojis for the first time.

The Genmoji feature was first made available in iOS 18.2 in December 2024 for users outside of the EU and China.

(Learn more about the Apple Intelligence Gemojis here.)

🏴 The flag for Sark?

Even those who follow emoji news closely may be slightly confused by the inclusion of the 🇨🇶 Flag for Sark in the Emoji 16.0 draft list.

This is because back in March 2022 Unicode announced that it would no longer be accepting proposals for "flag emoji of any category."

This policy remains in force, though 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).

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

These updates are in iOS 18.4 beta 2 which is now available for developers. iOS 18.4 is expected to be officially released "this Spring" (northern hemisphere).

Based on past iOS beta history, the final public release of iOS 18.4 will likely come to users in late March or early April.

As with all beta software, designs are subject to change before the final release, as was seen most recently in the beta releases for iOS 15.4 and iOS 12.1.