Emoji 15.1 includes head shakes and a phoenix

There are new emoji on the way… eventually. As reported by Emojipedia, the Unicode Consortium has formally approved Emoji 15.1, meaning a batch of new emoji will appear on your devices at some point in the future.

There aren’t quite as many additions to the emoji lineup as there have been in previous releases. The brand new emoji are a head shaking horizontally, a head shaking vertically, a phoenix, a lime, a brown mushroom, and a broken chain, according to Emojipedia. There are also new emoji denoting different family sizes and a few versions of emoji you might be familiar with that will face different directions.

I’m personally very excited to see how some of these show up across the internet; I imagine the phoenix will be a particularly popular one. But unfortunately, it sometimes takes months for companies like Apple and Microsoft to build support for the new emoji into their software, so you might be waiting awhile to be able to drop a lime emoji on your friends.

If you feel like an emoji is missing from the current lineup, you can submit a proposal for one yourself. (I chronicled my process making the waffle and yawning face emoji in a 2019 story for The Verge.) Here’s the Unicode Consortium’s guidelines on how to submit your proposal. Submissions will reopen in April 2024.