Google is working on the next generation of emojis, which are available for free thanks to its Noto Emoji project. First off, there are 31 new emojis to catch up with Unicode 15.0 (a total of 3,664), which will soon be available on Android and other Google projects early next year.
New emojis
Also available in monochromatic form
One of the biggest updates is animation support. Check out an example below. You can also check out all the animations currently available here – they are available for download as GIFs and video files, and you can use them today.
Google is also switching to a new font format called COLRv1. These are vector images, so they create smaller font files (eg Twitter’s “Twemoji” icon set dropped from 9MB to 1.85MB). Plus, they stay sharp even when zoomed in.
COLRv1 emojis can use smooth gradients and colors are customizable to boot. At the moment the colors can only be changed from the app or browser. This is an easy way for apps to bring some brand coloring onto the emojis and can be used, for example, for quick and easy night mode emojis. Here’s a look at what’s possible.
Same duck emoji, different color palettes
Custom goth emojis, why not
An important limitation of current technology is that you cannot send an emoji with custom colors. As a workaround you can use the Emoji Kitchen feature of the Gboard keyboard and create custom emoji stickers that you can send instead.
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