Facebook Unveils New Emojis That Allow Users to Set Gender and Skin Tones

Starting tomorrow, you can change the skin color of your favorite emojis on Facebook Messenger. The new update also lets you change the gender of five traditionally male emojis: the pedestrian, police officer, jogger, swimmer and surfer. It has also introduced red-headed emojis. “Messenger is beginning to make emojis more representative of the world we live in,” says the Facebook post that announced these changes.

For changing skin color, Messenger allows users to set a default skin color for their emojis. This can be later changed for each emoji by holding down on the emoji and selecting the color (like on the iPhone keyboard) or by changing it in Messenger’s settings. This update will also allow messages to have a standard set of emoji through Messenger’s emoji picker so that users can communicate using different devices without receiving an empty box character or a wrong emoji. According to Messenger, almost 10 percent of chats sent through the app include emojis.

In this update, which is available globally, Facebook has added around 1,500 emoji and created more than 100.