Twemoji 12.1.5 Emoji Changelog

Twemoji 12.1.5 Emoji Changelog

Today Twitter has released Twemoji 12.1.5, bringing a large selection of new gender neutral emojis to the platform.

This release comes not long after Twemoji 12.1.4, which updated several existing emojis to show a gender neutral appearance.

Twemoji-12.3-Changelog-Image

Above: All the brand new emojis in Twemoji 12.1.5. Image: Twitter designs / Emojipedia composite.

A total of 168 new emojis are included in Twemoji 12.1.5, all of which are part of Emoji 12.1 which was approved by Unicode in October 2019.

All new emojis in Emoji 12.1 are constructed using zero-width-joiner (ZWJ) sequences, which all use existing emoji codepoints to create the new gender inclusive options[1].

Both ๐Ÿ’ Kiss and ๐Ÿ‘ช Family were also amongst the 394 previously-available emoji designs revised in Twemoji 12.1.4 in November 2019.

Twemoji-12.2-Changelog-Image---All-Updated-Designs

Above: All the updated emoji designs featured in Twemoji 12.1.4. Image: Twitter designs / Emojipedia composite.

Now in Twemoji, the need to choose a specific gender when sending an emoji such as a ๐Ÿ‘ฎ Police Officer or ๐Ÿ„ Person Surfing is no longer a requirement, while for gendered variations such as ๐Ÿ‘ฎโ€โ™€๏ธ Woman Police Officer and ๐Ÿ„โ€โ™‚๏ธ Man Surfing) remain options.

This approach is more consistent with how the Unicode Consortium defines many emojis and follows similar updates made by Apple and Google in recent months.

๐Ÿ†• New

Twemoji 12.1.5 has today introduced gender neutral versions of Emoji 11.0's hair options which were previously limited to ๐Ÿ‘ฉ Woman or ๐Ÿ‘จ Man.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-Gender-Neutral-Person-Hair-Styles

Above: New gender-neutral emojis with various hair styles in Twemoji 12.1.5.

Additionally, there are non-gender-specific ๐Ÿง‘ Person designs using a ๐Ÿฆฏ Probing Cane, ๐Ÿฆฝ Manual Wheelchair, and ๐Ÿฆผ Motorized Wheelchair.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-Gender-Neutral-Access-Emojis

Above: New accessibility-focused gender neutral emojis.

There are a total of 16 new profession-based emoji designs introduced in Twemoji 12.1.5, providing previously-unavailable gender neutral versions of the likes of ๐Ÿง‘โ€๐ŸŽค Singer and ๐Ÿง‘โ€โœˆ๏ธ Pilot.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-Emoji-Changelog-Professions

Above: New profession-based emojis without a gender specified.

Finally, Twemoji 12.1.5 expands the skin tone compositions options for three of the four types of hand holding emojis, specifically ๐Ÿง‘โ€๐Ÿคโ€๐Ÿง‘ People Holding Hands, ๐Ÿ‘ญ Women Holding Hands, and ๐Ÿ‘ฌ Men Holding Hands.

As per Emoji 12.1 now the order of skin tones can also be chosen. For example ๐Ÿ‘ฉ๐Ÿฟโ€๐Ÿคโ€๐Ÿ‘ฉ๐Ÿป Women Holding Hands: Dark Skin Tone, Light Skin Tone was available months ago, yet the opposite sequence of ๐Ÿ‘ฉ๐Ÿปโ€๐Ÿคโ€๐Ÿ‘ฉ๐Ÿฟ Women Holding Hands: Light Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone is new in this release. Both feature a woman with dark skin tone and one with light skin tone, but the new sequence is in the opposite order.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-People-Holding-Hands

Above: ๐Ÿง‘โ€๐Ÿคโ€๐Ÿง‘ People Holding Hands combinations in Twemoji 12.1.5.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-Women-Holding-Hands

Above: a selection of Twemoji 12.1.5's new ๐Ÿ‘ญ Women Holding Hands combinations.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-Men-Holding-Hands

Above: a selection of Twemoji 12.1.5's new ๐Ÿ‘ฌ Men Holding Hands combinations.

๐Ÿ†™ Changes

Below is a selection of the 394 emojis changed in the previous release; Twemoji 12.1.4.

The majority of these changes were been made in the name of a more gender neutral presentation.

๐Ÿ’‡ Person Getting Haircut now appears with shorter hair, paler lips and an orange top in the gender-neutral version.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-Emoji-Changelog-Comparison-Haircut

๐Ÿ‘ฏ People With Bunny Ears now wear leotards with longer shorts and higher necklines in the gender-neutral version.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-Emoji-Changelog-Comparison-People-In-Bunny-Ears

๐Ÿงœ Merperson now has purple hair and is no longer wearing a strapless top in the gender-neutral version.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-Emoji-Changelog-Comparison-Merperson

๐ŸงŸ Zombie has new hair, is clad in orange, and has lost their tie and collar in the gender-neutral version.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-Emoji-Changelog-Comparison-Zombie

๐Ÿง‘โ€๐Ÿคโ€๐Ÿง‘ People Holding Hands now displays two gender neutral people holding hands, as opposed to a woman and a man.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-Emoji-Changelog-Comparison-People-Holding-Hands

๐Ÿ’ Kiss has been changed to two gender neutral people kissing, instead of a woman and man.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-Emoji-Changelog-Comparison-Kiss

๐Ÿ‘ช Family now shows two ambiguous adults and one ambiguous child, with the adults' clothing taking the colors from ๐Ÿง‘โ€๐Ÿคโ€๐Ÿง‘ People Holding Hands.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-Emoji-Changelog-Comparison-Family

โธ๏ธ Unchanged

๐Ÿ’‘ Couple With Heart continues to show a woman and man, instead of switching to a gender inclusive design.

Emojipedia-Twemoji-12.3-Couple-With-Heart

This contrasts with both Apple and Google's recent updates of this particular emoji.

๐Ÿ“ถ Release

Rollout of Twemoji 12.1.5 began today across Twitter's various platforms. Twemoji 12.1.5 support will be made available for all users of the Twitter website, the Twitter mobile site, Tweetdeck, and progressively roll out to Twitter for Android. Twemoji 12.1.4 was released in November 2019.

Twemoji 12.1.5 will also be made available via the Open Source Twemoji Repository in the coming days, where Twemoji 12.1.4 is already available.

Users of the iOS Twitter app will continue to see Apple emoji designs, as Twitter for iOS uses to the native system designs for emoji support.

NOTE: An earlier version of this article mentioned 10 new emojis for skin tone variations of the single codepoint ๐Ÿ’ Kiss and ๐Ÿ‘ช Family. These were not part of this release, and the reference has been removed.


  1. For example, the 23 new non-gender-specific emojis (138 when you include skin tone variations) use the ๐Ÿง‘ Person emoji in the place of the ๐Ÿ‘ฉ Woman or ๐Ÿ‘จ Man used in the previously-available gender-specific versions of these emojis. โ†ฉ๏ธŽ