Twemoji 2.3 Emoji Changelog

Jeremy Burge

May 24, 2017 • 4 min read

Twitter has updated its custom emoji set with support for all of Emoji 5.0.

This means for the first time, users of Twitter.com will be able to use emojis such as Star-Struck, Breast-Feeding, Orange Heart and Face With Raised Eyebrow.

Above: New emojis now supported on Twitter.

Twitter is now the first major platform with full Emoji 5.0 conformance; coming just a week after Google's announcement of Emoji 5.0 support in the forthcoming Android O release.

New

Everything that's new in Twemoji 2.3 comes as part of the wider Emoji 5.0 update from Unicode. This list was finalized in March 2017.

Some of these emojis rely on characters which are in beta as part of Unicode 10.0. This does not appear to be causing any issues at present.

Here's a tweet created in April 2017 which now shows these new emojis when viewed on the Twitter website:

In total there are 239 new emojis included in this release. When removing duplicates and skin tones there are 69 unique new images in this collection.

What's new in Twemoji 2.3

Smileys

Nine new smileys are available in Twemoji 2.3. The infamous "Colbert" emoji is there, along with an expressive shhh face.

People

New people include three gender inclusive emojis which are listed as child, adult, and older adult. These are intended as a compliment for boy/girl; man/woman; and older man/older woman.

A woman wearing a hijab is also included, as well as a man with a beard, and a breastfeeding mother.

Fantasy

Fantasy characters range from witches and wizards to mermaids and mermen. A number also support skin tone modification.

Activities

Clothing

Animals

Animals are always popular additions in any emoji update. In particular, the giraffe has seen strong demand from Emojipedians. The hedgehog in Twemoji is quite cute.

Food and Drink

Miscellaneous

Flags

Emoji 5.0 supports a wide range of subdivision flags, and three have been marked as Recommended for General Interchange: flags for England, Scotland, and Wales.

Note that the fallback behavior for these flags is to display the 🏴 Black Flag emoji.

Users viewing these flags using Twitter apps instead of the Twitter website may see only black flags until more platforms support these emojis natively.

Changed

In total, 55 emojis have been updated in Twemoji 2.3.

👹 Ogre has more prominent teeth, and a non-oval face:

🤦 Person Facepalming has her eyes closed making the gesture more obvious:

💆 Person Getting Massage appears less up-tight with relaxed closed eyes:

☝️ Index Pointing Up is now a right hand instead of a left hand:^[1]

🕴 Man in Business Suit Levitating replaced his business blue tie with a skinny black tie:

🍔 Hamburger had lettuce and tomato added at no extra cost:

🌚 New Moon Face, 🌝 Full Moon With Face, 🌛 First Quarter Moon With Face and 🌜 Last Quarter Moon With Face have higher contrast facial features:

🈳️ Japanese “vacancy” Button now has a blue background:

What's changed in Twemoji 2.3

Release

Twemoji 2.3 is now showing for all users of Twitter.com on desktop and mobile. These changes are also available on TweetDeck, work as Twitter Stickers, and have been uploaded as part of the Twemoji open source emoji project.

Users of Twitter clients for macOS, iOS, Android and Windows will not see these updates, as these apps use native emojis for each respective platform.

Those on the web, however, will see your tweets in all their emoji-laden glory.

View every emoji now in Twemoji

Sorry lefties every vendor now uses a right hand for this emoji now. ↩︎