Unicode Emoji 12.0 — final for 2019

Emoji 12.0 data has been released, with 59 new emoji such as:

mechanical arm	deaf person
people holding hands	otter
waffle	ice cube
ringed planet	drop of blood

With 171 variants for gender and skin tone, this makes a total of 230 emoji including variants, such as:

The new emoji are listed in Emoji Recently Added v12.0, with sample images. These images are just samples: vendors for mobile phones, PCs, and web platforms will typically use images that fit their overall emoji designs. In particular, the Emoji Ordering v12.0 chart shows how the new emoji sort compared to the others, with new emoji marked with rounded-rectangles. The other Emoji Charts for Version 12.0 have been updated to show the emoji.

The new emoji typically start showing up on mobile phones in September/October — some platforms may release them earlier. The new emoji will soon be available for adoption to help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages.

For implementers:

1. The new Emoji 12.0 set includes the data needed for vendors to begin working on their emoji fonts and code ahead of the release of Unicode 12.0, scheduled for March 5.
2. The emoji specification (UTS #51) has additional guidelines on gender and skin tone, and other clarifications. The definitions in UTS #51 and data files and have been enhanced to be more consistent and useful. For details, see Modifications
3. The people holding hands emoji now have four combinations of gender and all the various combinations of skin tones, for a total of 71 new variants. Implementations may optionally support skin-tone combinations for other multi-person emoji.
4. The CLDR names and search keywords for the new emoji characters in over 80 languages, and the sort order for emoji, will be finalized by the end of March with the release of CLDR v35.

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Over 130,000 characters are available for adoption, to help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages.