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Android has a new way to colorfully animate messages since Google rolled out emoji reaction effects to Google Messages. Reaction effects empower your conversations using emojis embedded into your texts. You can add reactions to your chats, creating a more dynamic and expressive flow in your conversations. The best part is that you do not need to upgrade from budget phone options to access these nifty Google Messages features.
Fall Unicode update will add 8 emoji to our keyboards
Dwight Schrute's proposal for a beet emoji was finally answered
Don't you just hate it when you want to explain in a text that you've been up all night digging up beets in your garden? Or that you're at a crime scene where a harp player was kidnapped while walking through a winter wood? When words just don't do it justice, we have the assistance of emoji to get our point across, for practically any emotion... or bizarrely specific circumstance. Occasionally, we're met with the frustrating first-world problem of not having an emoji to depict what we're experiencing or feeling. That's why the folks in charge of that keyboard of little pictures periodically consider suggestions for new additions to their repertoire.
Gboard simplifies picking your emoji skin tone and gender expression of choice
Your selection will now apply to all compatible emoji by default
Keyboards remain critical to facilitate human-machine interaction, and although phones are not Blackberrys anymore, the best keyboard apps on Android have a lot in common. They have become integral to our modes of expression, especially with the ever-growing catalog of available emoji. Google’s Gboard is well aware of the responsibility it shoulders in helping us express thoughts conveniently, and we see frequent quality-of-life changes to the user experience. The latest one makes it easy to pick a default skin tone and gender expression for emoji.
Gmail's ongoing changelog has been impressive lately. Just recently, we noticed the email service's intentions to increase safety for its users by bashing spammy emails in 2024. Besides designing a safe realm, the service will now ensure you're not bored when emailing friends or colleagues. Google knows that expressing yourself in words takes time and effort that you don't always have, so in a move inspired by the best messaging platforms, Gmail is helping you condense some messages into emoji reactions.
Emoji don't just pop up out of nowhere — they are carefully crafted with a lot of oversight from the Unicode Consortium, a non-profit standardization body for Unicode. As part of this system, there are voting members from Apple, Google, and Microsoft who help determine what gets added to the Unicode Standard. Now, these voters have approved a new set of emoji that most of us should see appear on our devices over the course of the next year.
Gmail wants to make responding to an email feel a little more like texting
Emoji reactions may be on the horizon
Social media and text messaging have made emoji an integral part of our daily conversations. Emoji reactions are an easy way to express emotions about a message you receive without having to type out an entire response. Previously, emoji reactions were only found on some of the best messaging apps, but they may soon be coming to your emails.
Your favorite emoji are flipping out in these new candidate designs
There are 108 new additions in total
Emoji are the de facto standard for emoting in conversations (and wallpapers) without using words. Thanks to the Unicode Consortium, the body dedicated to maintaining the international standard for symbols used in conversations, we now have an adequate selection of emoji to pick from. The catalog keeps expanding annually, and this year’s draft with 108 new emoji is now under consideration.
Think twice before sending that next thumbs-up emoji — it's now legally binding
Emoji can be considered a legally enforceable digital signature in Canada
Emoji have become commonplace in phone conversations, to the point where most people don't think twice about giving a thumbs up or hearting messages. Heck, emoji are even animated now — but they're not without issues. We've all found ourselves regretting an emoji choice after someone else took it the wrong way, and things like an eggplant or a peach can definitely have more than one meaning. Now, it appears that the thumbs-up emoji can get you taken to court.
WhatsApp finally pushes new Unicode 15.0 emoji to beta testers
The new emoji were first spotted on WhatsApp beta in December
WhatsApp has been around for a while and continues to rank among the best social apps out there. The Meta-owned platform's feature set is rapidly expanding, too, with the decent success of Communities and the imminent release of Newsetters. We're now getting info on some new emoji popping up on the WhatsApp beta for Android version 2.23.5.13. We first learned about the feature's arrival back in December.
Google Messages starts letting users react with any emoji
Google Messages is expanding your choice of emoji reactions to fit any situation
Google has come a long way toward transforming the Messages app into its own legitimate competitor for Apple's iMessage. The company introduced emoji reactions to Messages in July 2020 after months of limited testing, although these emojis are currently not displayed beautifully on iOS devices. While Google discovered a workaround for this inconsistency last year, Apple's refusal to support RCS chats on iMessage remains a headache for Android users. Another kicker is those emoji reactions on Google Messages have been limited to a set of seven options, but this appears to be changing as the app lifts that restriction.
The Unicode Consortium — the group in charge of all the symbols we use on computing platforms and how we use them — is taking 2023 to adjust to a new annual cadence in updating its guidelines after the COVID pandemic effectively knocked its March publications back to September. You might've noticed the new batch from Emoji 15.0 dropping on your Galaxies and Pixels since the fall. This means we'll be seeing Unicode 16.0 in September 2024 and a smaller Unicode 15.1 update this fall. So it goes for the Emoji 15.1 standard as we get a preview of what it will bring.
New year. New you. New dawn. New light. We got any more of these? How about new emoji? The Unicode Consortium published its official list of new emoji back in September and Samsung put up its own designs for Galaxy device owners to use shortly afterward. It's taking a bit longer, though, for some of our favorite trillion-dollar (give or take) software maintainers. Now, in 2023, Google's next in the queue and it looks to be drip-feeding these fresh symbols to devices on Android 13 QPR2 Beta 2.
WhatsApp is working to support new Unicode 15 emoji
The latest beta also tweaks the appearance of eight existing emoji
We know WhatsApp as one of the most popular messaging services today, and for good reason. It may not always be the first to add the latest features, but there are plenty of modes of expression available in its arsenal, like Communities, support for large groups, and even messaging yourself to remedy forgetfulness. Now, WhatsApp is working on adding support for new emoji recently approved by the Unicode Consortium, helping you express yourself better — and with fewer words.
Google Messages is getting ready to let you react with any emoji you like
Look forward to the edgelord in your life spamming every message with 💩
Smartphone users get weirdly defensive about a lot of their choices, and right there at the top of that list lies messaging platforms. From group texts to green bubbles, leaving on read to forwarding memes, there's no shortage of tiny little topics for us to get all nice and contentious as we debate them. Message reactions are definitely one of those subjects, whether you're all-in with RCS or just trying to keep up with your iPhone-using friends. Thankfully, Google looks ready to really open the message reaction floodgates, as the Messages app tests the ability to react with any emoji you want.
A lot of us don't typically think of the keyboard as an app, but it's definitely crucial infrastructure to the whole Android experience. Google has long had a finger in this pie with Gboard, up there among the best keyboard apps on Android for all the right reasons. The running goal now is to rack up more great features; the company hopes a redesigned emoji picker utility will be one of them.
Google Chat is getting Slack's most important feature
Free yourself from the wearisome world of pre-defined emoji
Collaborative communication tools are the cornerstone of any remote work environment. As they pick up new features and functionality, they often empower us to do our jobs more efficiently, saving time, money, and effort. That's exactly why we're so excited to see Google Chat adopting what might be the single most important feature Slack has to offer: support for custom emoji.
31 new emoji get Unicode approval, and Google's letting you try them out early
Support for the new characters is already starting to arrive
Emoji have become so essential to how many of us communicate online, that it's a little hard to remember life without them. Just as written language evolves, emoji themselves need to keep abreast of the times, and the Unicode Consortium shoulders the responsibility of screening candidates and updating the library annually. With September upon us, just like clockwork, the Consortium has given the green light for Unicode 15.0, complete with 31 new emoji — and if that weren't enough, it's also being joined by Google with some emoji news of its own.
WhatsApp isn’t the only big tech service exhibiting a recent fondness for emoji; Google Docs also added emoji reactions in April this year. Despite this improvement, including emoji is still quite a chore. Google hopes to fix this now with support for inline emoji in the document’s text.
WhatsApp beta learns to have a heart… emoji
The new animated WhatsApp heart emoji is not just colorful, but also larger than we anticipated
WhatsApp is always busy testing its latest enhancements, like what we've seen with moderation tools for group chats, privacy improvements, and emoji reactions for status updates. Back in June we learned about work towards giving users a new option to express themselves with large, animated, beating heart emoji, but it wasn't quite ready for beta at the time. Now those beating heart emoji are back, bigger than ever, and waiting for beta users to give them a try.
At long last, Google Chat remembers your most frequently used emoji
It's several years late to the party, but okay
There are already more emoji in existence than you will ever use, and we're only getting more added all the time. How in the world is anyone supposed to keep up? Understandably, many of us fall into the habit of using a subset of our favorite emoji more than the rest. Now Google Chat is helping to make your go-to emoji easier to access than ever, with the introduction of a "frequently used" section.