Google previews Android’s new emoji ahead of December launch, releases animated collection

Ben Schoon | Sep 13 2022 - 12:51 pm PT

Emoji have become a core part of how we communicate, and today, Google has a few announcements, including Unicode 15 emoji additions, animated versions of Android’s emoji, and more.

In a post on the Google Developers blog, Google’s Creative Director of emoji and Emoji Kitchen Chef Jennifer Daniel offered up a few updates on the company’s work with emoji as of late.

First and foremost, that includes new Unicode 15 additions to Google’s emoji library. Wing, leftward and rightward hand, shaking face, ginger, donkey, moose, goose, jellyfish, pea pod, and new heart colors are just some of the new emoji added in the Unicode 15 standard, as we reported earlier this year. In today’s blog post, Google shows off its designs for all 21 of these new emoji, as pictured below.

Google said that these new emoji from Unicode 15 will be added to AOSP “in the coming weeks” and will arrive in Android starting with updates in December. Pixel will presumably be first in line for this update.

Alongside Unicode 15 emoji heading to Android and other Google products, the company is also releasing a colored version of its “Noto Emoji” font. Noto Emoji is an open-source emoji font that can be used online and is used by Chrome and other Google products. Originally, the font only supported emoji in black-and-white, but it is now adding support for full-color versions.

Google is also releasing, for the first time, a batch of official animated versions of the emoji used in Android. While not all emoji are supported, you will find nearly 200 different animated emojis on Google’s website. Some of these animated emojis are already used by Google Messages.

Finally, Google Chrome is also adding support for emoji that can change colors. A demo of that functionality is available here, as long as you’re using the latest version of Chrome.