How Platforms Categorize Emojis: CLDR, Unicode Groups, and Custom Taxonomies
Your keyboard's eight tabs are not the only categorization system. Here is why three different standards disagree on where emojis belong. Emoji categories look simple on the surface. The keyboard shows eight tabs, you tap one, you scroll to the emoji you want. Underneath that simple UI are at least three different categorization systems that do not agree with each other, and the one your keyboard uses is probably not the one the Unicode standard uses. I mapped these systems while building a reference tool, and the mismatches explain a lot of confusing keyboard behavior. I started mapping categories because users of my emoji reference tool complained that emojis were in the wrong category. I checked against the Unicode specification and found that my categories were correct per the spec. The users were comparing against their phone's keyboard, which used different categories. Both were right, just according to different standards. The Unicode Emoji Specification Categories The Unicode emoji specification sorts every emoji into one of eight categories: Smileys and Emotion, People and Body, Animals and Nature, Food and Drink, Travel and Places, Activities, Objects, and Symbols. These are the categories defined in the emoji data file, and they are the closest thing to an official categorization. They are designed for browsing, grouping emojis by what they depict so a user can work with by topic. The specification categories are stable. Read the full article on Emoji Reference, and copy any emoji mentioned from the catalog of 1303+ entries on the home page.