Skip to main content

Windows 10’s emoji give the middle finger some diversity

windows 10 emoji windows10 middlefingerscolors
Image used with permission by copyright holder
The best part about emoji is that there’s one for almost any situation. Whether you’ve slipped in chocolate ice cream and are at the hospital, or your car fell into a volcano so you went surfing, those fun little characters say things we never dreamed we could put into words. When the Unicode committee announced the expansion of the emoji alphabet, there was one symbol that a lot of people thought had been needed for a long time. Now Windows 10 has added the famed emoji to their library of OS-supported symbols, along with the choice of skin tones that’s recently found its way onto mobile devices.

Windows10-MiddlefingerSingle
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Sorry, that wasn’t directed towards you. You might think the bird is a relatively new innovation — a modern gesture crafted by punk rockers or skate culture — but the one finger salute has actually been recognized as a symbol of disrespect since the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Many great philosophers have used the symbol as a form of debasement, or rejection of culture, from Diogenes of Sinope to Eminem of Detroit.

Recommended Videos

Some snooping in the technical preview files also revealed a more varied selection of skin tones will be available to Windows 10 users. Unlike iOS emojis, which default to yellow, the Windows emoji set will have a default grey skin, with the option to choose from five other skin tones.

Windows10-PrayingColors
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Microsoft has also changed the appearance of numerous traditional “smiley” emoji, mostly to better conform to their look in iOS and Android. For example, the so-called “confounded face” has been changed from a sheepish smirk to the more iconic (and anatomically impossible) M-shaped mouth.

confoundedface
Image used with permission by copyright holder

While the new emojis should be available with the final release of Windows 10, there is a built-in emoji keyboard for the desktop version you can use now with the older set to hold you over. Simply right click on the taskbar and select “Show touch keyboard button” and then click the keyboard symbol that appears in the lower right hand corner. The smiley face button will take you to a keyboard set with the standard set of emojis, as well as a library of emoticons.

Brad Bourque
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Brad Bourque is a native Portlander, devout nerd, and craft beer enthusiast. He studied creative writing at Willamette…
The best Windows 10 keyboard shortcuts
Close up of Microsoft Surface Pro 6 keyboard.

Keyboard shortcuts can speed up even the most mundane of Windows 10 tasks. Learning the best of them can make your PC experience faster, more efficient, and, in some cases, even more enjoyable.

These are the essential Windows 10 shortcuts that can make you feel more like a PC wizard. A master of the keys, so to speak.

Read more
Windows 11’s new update cadence finally makes sense
The Start Menu pulled up on the Surface Pro 8.

Alongside the announcement of its first major update to Windows 11 (known as the Windows 11 2022 Update), Microsoft is also dispelling some of the rumors about its update cadence for the operating system.

In a briefing held with the media, the heads of Windows 11 marketing team reaffirmed the commitment to a single, large update each fall, but with smaller "controlled feature rollouts" (CFRs) popping uo throughout the year as needed.

Read more
Top 10 Windows shortcuts everyone should know
An individual using a laptop's keyboard.

Windows 11 shortcuts are a constantly-used feature by practically all PC users. Apart from saving you time from carrying out the specific command without having to perform a few extra clicks on your mouse, it’s simply more convenient to refer back to shortcuts via your keyboard.

Although you may be satisfied with the Windows shortcuts you already know about and utilize on a daily basis, you can enhance your general Windows experience in a big way with these 10 shortcuts everyone should know.
Ctrl + Z
Tired of always having to use your mouse to find and click the Undo button on a program like Microsoft Word or, say, entering details on a website or editing images? Ctrl + Z will basically undo whatever your last action was, providing you a convenient way to reverse edits and changes within a second. From personal experience, this shortcut proved to be especially useful for productivity applications.
Ctrl + Shift + T
We’ve all been there. Nowadays, our browsers are inundated with multiple tabs, and as such, it’s hard to keep track of at times. Eventually, you’re going to close a tab on accident when trying to select it. Instead of trying to remember what it was or spending a few seconds accessing it and reopening it via the Recently Closed feature (on Chrome), simply hit Ctrl + Shift + T to restore the last closed tab. Similarly, Ctrl + N will open a new tab.

Read more