There are over 3600 different emojis worldwide and everyone has their own favourites. Some time ago, Google animated the popular smileys, giving them a completely new look. Now the animated emojis are finally available.
The Unicode Consortium announced the last major batch of new emojis in September 2022. Not only new motifs were included, but also animated emojis for Android for the first time. The selection thus increased to 3664 motifs (as of September 2022). Just in time for World Emoji Day on July 17, 2023, animated emojis are finally available. In order to be able to use them, however, users have to take action themselves, since Google is not rolling out any major updates. TECHBOOK reveals what needs to be done in order to be able to use the small moving images in chats.
Google brings new motifs …
The new emojis that Google has announced for Android are based on the current Unicode 15.0 and include quite different motifs. Included are, for example, a comb, new hearts, ginger and peas as well as a fan and a flute. But there are also new animals to discover, including the kicking donkey, a moose head, a jellyfish, a blackbird and a goose. When it comes to smileys, the “shaking face” is new.
The selection of motifs that can be used to describe situations, express feelings or even send whole messages in symbolic form has grown with the new releases. If that’s not enough for you, you can even combine emojis for some time now.
… and animated emojis
The announced animated emojis, which can be used immediately, also bring new impetus. They’re the classics like the grinning, tearful, or angry emoji—only now they’re moving. For example, the burning heart has the fire flickering, the tearful laughing emoji spinning in circles, and the melting emoji doing just that – melting.
A total of 227 of these animated emojis are on the Googlefonts website listed. This is partly the same subject, but shown in different colors and skin tones. The emojis displayed initially appear motionless, but if users move the mouse pointer over a motif, the individual animation begins.
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Availability and usage of the new emojis
Although the animated emojis were introduced last year, Google has only now released them for use. In contrast to regular new emoji releases, however, the animated emojis do not come to the user in one go via an update package. Rather, if you want to use them, you have to actively download them – with one exception. Within the Google Messages app, the animated emojis are automatically replaced with the previous, rigid motifs. Both chat partners don’t have to do anything other than select an emoji as usual.
When using the animated emojis in the chat, however, you can only see the movement if a single motif is sent. This is then not only shown larger as usual, it also moves. The classic, still view of the emojis, on the other hand, remains if you line up several of them in a row or set them within a text. Then the emojis also appear smaller than when they are sent individually.
But the animated emojis can also be used outside of Google Messages. Because the entire emoji library, including the source files and associated metadata such as short codes, is on github available as open source. Clicking on the selected emoji opens a menu through which the emoticon can be downloaded. The formats Lottie, Webp and Gif are offered. For regular users, saving as a gif is probably the easiest. They can then embed the animated emoji directly into their chats. The way might seem a bit cumbersome as users have to select and download each individual emoji. However, it seems likely that Google will soon make the new emojis available more widely and directly. At the latest with the update to Emoji 15.1, which is expected in September, there will be new announcements in the field of emoji.