Facebook Messenger Adds More Diversity to Emojis, Including the Oft Requested Redhead
Emoji overhaul includes characters that better reflect skin tones and gender.
— -- Redheads rejoice!
The oft requested redhead emoji is coming to Facebook, along with more than 100 other new characters reflecting the diversity of our world.
The newly added characters also include the option to choose between six different skin tones. Users will be able to pick the skin color they will most frequently use and set that as a default choice, which can be changed in settings at any time.
Facebook's new options are also designed to better represent gender, including gender-agnostic choices and a more balanced representation of women in the work force.
"Now, using Messenger emojis, you'll see a female police officer, runner, pedestrian, surfer and swimmer for the very first time, and we'll keep rolling these out," Facebook's Messenger team said in a statement.
The new emoji, which will begin rolling out on Thursday, will also be consistent for users, regardless of whether they're accessing Messenger via Android, iOS or on the internet. Previously, some emoji would show up while others would be inconsistent across platforms, "which means sometimes the emoji you wanted to send wasn't the one that showed up," Facebook's team noted.
Along with the diverse emoji, Facebook is also debuting 1,500 other newly designed Messenger emoji. They're making it easy to find the right character with a new emoji picker to the left of the composer that lets users toggle between the regular text keyboard and the emoji one.