There’s a major emoji overload and Apple needs to do something about it

Apple

• There are 70 new emoji coming to iPhones in the coming weeks
  as part of the iOS 12.1 software update. 
• The Unicode Consortium, the governing body for emoji,
  approves dozes of new symbols every year. 
• While new emoji are great, iPhone users have no easy way to
  sift the 2,800-plus emoji on their phones. 
• There should be no new emoji until there’s an easy way to
  find the one you’re looking for on your iPhone. 

In just a few weeks, 70 new emoji will arrive on your
iPhone. 

The new emoji include everything from redheads — like those
pictured above — to a bagel, a lacrosse stick, a lobster, and
more.

This is a good thing, right?

Wrong. 

Hey, I’ll be honest: I’m a huge fan of emoji, and I probably
overuse them when texting with friends and family. Plus, as
someone who is occasionally called a redhead, I’m thrilled that I
and my ginger ilk will be better represented in emoji form. I’m
even optimistic that having a bagel emoji will probably change my
life.

But the fact of the matter is, we just can’t handle this annual
influx of new emojis anymore — at some point, enough is enough.
It’s become far too difficult to ever find the emoji you’re
looking for at the exact moment you need it. If Apple insists on
including dozens of new emoji each year with its latest software
update, it needs to add an emoji search function to the iPhone,
or just stop adding new emoji altogether.

Don’t believe me? OK, fine: say it’s your friend’s birthday, and
you’re hoping to send her a festive text message to help
celebrate her special day. You’d like to include a balloon emoji.
The only problem is, where the heck is the balloon emoji, anyway?
Is it under the smiley faces? Hidden away in the tab with the
little car and the little building? Suddenly, you’re left
scrolling through every single character before giving up in
frustration. 

It’s just too much.

(By the way, the balloon emoji is underneath the present
emoji inside the tab that looks like a light bulb — obviously!)

2,823 emoji

For the past several years, we’ve gotten dozens upon dozens of
new emoji annually. The Unicode Consortium — the governing body
responsible for approving new emoji designs — typically approves
the new characters for all platforms sometime around February,
then they roll out on various devices and services over the
course of the next several months.

Apple usually adds new emoji to iPhones via a software update
sometime in October. This year, they will arrive as part of iOS 12.1, which
will land sometime in the next few weeks. 

A sampling of the new emoji coming to phones this
fall.
Emojipedia

This year’s update will include 70 new emoji, and 157 new
characters total, which includes gender and skin tone
variations. Last year, we got 56 unique characters, and a whopping 239 total
emoji.

All of that would be well and good, except our phones are now
absolutely clogged with tiny characters and symbols, half of
which are obscure and rarely, if ever, used. Seriously — have you
ever used the paperclip emoji? 

On top of that, each symbol that represents a person — or
fictional creature, like a mermaid — has variations for gender
and skin tone. This is a great thing! The more often people can
feel represented, in ways big and small, the better. 

Sometimes, though, the emoji powers-that-be take it a little too
far: 

The current total number of emoji, including skin tone and gender
variations, is 2,823 — that’s way too many if you ask me. 

Just make a search button (please!)

If we’re going to keep getting new emoji each year — and all
signs point to yes — I have one request: please, please make it
easier to find them on your iPhone. 

Yes, this is an iPhone-specific problem — Twitter has a search
function for emoji; Google has an emoji search function across
its phones and keyboards. Even Apple’s iMessage on your Mac lets
you search for a specific character.

Here’s how predictive emoji works on iPhones right
now.
Apple

And Slack, the popular work chat app, does you one better: typing
in “:” followed by what you’re looking for will bring up a bevy
of emoji to choose from. Type “:car,” and it’ll bring up a
selection of car emoji to choose from, for instance. 

Apple has tried to add a way to make finding the right emoji
easier in the past, but it’s not fool-proof and, to be honest, I
rarely find myself using it. It’s called predictive emoji: if you
type in a word in iMessage — say, for instance, “train” — then
tap on the keyboard button, the word will highlight orange.
Tapping on that word will bring up emoji suggestions where
applicable.

While it works, that isn’t the most seamless way to do it — a
good old search button would work just fine. 

So while I may be a self-professed emoji fiend, I don’t want any
new symbols making it harder to find my favorite characters, like
the hug emoji, the slice of pizza, or the dark red heart. Give me
a search button, or give me no new emoji at all. ?