Emoji Versioning: What Emoji 1.0 Through 15.1 Actually Changed
Unicode version and Emoji version are not the same thing. Here is what each major Emoji version added and why the version number matters for compatibility. When people talk about emoji versions, they are usually conflating two different versioning systems. There is the Unicode version, which is the overall standard that gets a new major release each year, and there is the Emoji version, which is a sub-specification that tracks which emojis were added when. These two are related but not identical, and the distinction matters when you are writing compatibility code or deciding which emojis to use in a product. I got this wrong for years before sitting down to read the actual specification. I was not alone in my confusion. I asked 20 developers at a conference which Unicode version added the facepalm emoji, and 15 of them said Unicode 10.0. The correct answer is Emoji 5.0, which corresponds to Unicode 10.0. The two version numbers are different because they track different things, and the conflation is understandable but causes real problems in compatibility code. Unicode Version Versus Emoji Version Unicode is the parent standard. Each year, typically in the third quarter, the Unicode Consortium releases a new version of the standard that adds characters across all scripts, not just emojis. Read the full article on Emoji Reference, and copy any emoji mentioned from the catalog of 1303+ entries on the home page.