Skip to main content

With iOS 10, your iPhone’s emojis are about to get more diverse than ever

The emojis on your iPhone are about to get more diverse than ever. Apple has announced a new set of emojis for iOS 10 that will depict women in sports, as well as a rainbow flag character.

Included in the update will be a female swimmer, runner, surfer, and cyclist. Not only that, but the upcoming set of emojis will include new family characters, such as a single mother and single father with children.

Recommended Videos

Of course, Apple’s not the only one working to make emojis a little more diverse. Google recently announced a number of new emojis set to appear in future versions of Android. Among the new emojis are female versions of 33 already-existing emojis, and 11 new emojis showing women in professional settings.

apple-emoji
Image used with permission by copyright holder

As mentioned, the iOS 10 update will include a rainbow flag emoji, which was proposed as an addition last month. On top of that, Apple recently proposed five emoji that look like they could be either men or women — a judge, artist, astronaut, pilot, and firefighter.

Apple has been playing a much larger role in the emojis that appear on the iPhone of late. The company is a member of the Unicode Consortium, which is the group that approves new emoji before they get pushed to phones. Apple was reportedly opposed to recent proposed emojis that depicted rifles, which were supposed to roll out in a set of 72 new emojis released last month. The symbols were supposed to be tied to the upcoming Olympics, and Microsoft reportedly agreed with Apple on having them removed. It’s not totally clear why the companies wanted the emojis removed, but the emojis have been criticized by gun-control activists.

The new emojis should roll out later this year alongside iOS 10.

Christian de Looper
Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…
These three iOS 26 beta features are my favorite so far
The Liquid Design lock screen on the iOS 26 developer beta 1 running on the iPhone 16 Pro

For fans of the Apple ecosystem, it’s been an incredible week. Apple’s annual WWDC 2025 keynote revealed a whole new Liquid Glass design that’s unified across all its platforms. Also unified across all platforms is the numbering scheme, with iOS 26 designed to represent the year of release… plus one. 

The new platform doesn’t deliver one of the key things I asked for — multitasking, which is available on iPadOS 26 — but it does bring several new features that make the iPhone far more usable. 

Read more
WWDC 2025: Apple announces iOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26 and more
Major updates to iOS, macOS, watchOS, iPadOS, tvOS and visionOS
WWDC 2025 logo

Apple kicked off WWDC 2025 with its keynote presentation at its annual World Wide Developer's conference, and it was a bumper affair.

We were treated to a raft of updates across all of the firm's software platforms, as we were introduced to iOS 26, iPadOS 26, watchOS 26, macOS 26, tvOS 26 and visionOS 26.

Read more
Will my iPhone get iOS 26? Here’s every supported model
We've got the full list of iOS 26 supported devices - find out if you're getting the new iPhone update
iOS 26 features on a series of iPhone screens

Apple announced iOS 26 at WWDC 2025, and the new iPhone update comes with a fresh new 'Liquid Glass' look and plenty of features - and there are loads of iOS 26 supported devices, which is great news.

And no, you haven't missed a volley of updates since iOS 18 in 2024. Apple has skipped a bunch of numbers, so instead of giving us iOS 19 in 2025, we got iOS 26 alongside iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26 and tvOS 26. In short, Apple's brought its operating system numbering into line. Nice.

Read more