Apple Brought These Fun New Emoji to Your iPhone With iOS 18.4

When Apple released iOS 18.4 on March 31, the update introduced a handful of new features, like a recipes section in Apple News and more controls in Control Center, to all iPhones. The update also brought some new emoji to all iPhones, including a tired-looking face with bags under its eyes — which is just a superb emoji, in my opinion. The other new emoji include a harp, shovel and a paint splatter. 

You can get the new emoji by downloading the update. To do so, go to Settings > General > Software Update, tap Update Now and follow the prompts on your screen.

Read more: An Expert’s Guide to iOS 18

Here’s the full list of the eight new emoji you can use now with iOS 18.4. 

• Face with bags under eyes
• Fingerprint
• Splatter
• Root vegetable
• Leafless tree
• Harp
• Shovel
• Flag of Sark

Google unveiled these emoji as part of Unicode 16.0 in September. 

Anyone can submit an idea for a new emoji. The Unicode Standard — a universal character encoding standard — is responsible for creating emoji. Unicode proposed nine new emoji in November 2024, including a Sasquatch and an orca. However, those are just proposed emoji. Unicode will decide in September which emoji to add next. 

For more on iOS 18, here’s what you need to know about iOS 18.4 and iOS 18.3. You can also check out our iOS 18 cheat sheet and what CNET writers and editors hope to see in iOS 19.

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