Each year, we get new emojis on our iPhone, iPads, and Macs. They typically come with the new iOS and macOS updates in the fall (though sometimes they're added in a point-release shortly after). Who decides which new emojis we get?
Emojis are defined by a group called the Unicode Consortium, comprised of representatives from a number of hardware and software companies. They agree on updates to the Unicode Standard, which is a common means of encoding and representing text in digital formats. It's the foundation of transmitting and displaying text on nearly all modern digital platforms.
Emojis are a part of the Unicode standard, and the group gets together each year to decide which new icons will be added to the official list. On January 5, Unicode announced the final Emoji 13.0 list. These are the emojis all the different software platform makers will build into their software this year.
