By MAKAYLA RICHARDS – Public Relations Manager
On April 8, iOS users were greeted with a nice surprise: some color on their emoji keyboard.
In an update of iOS 8.3 released this week, Apple has incorporated a more race-inclusive emoji keyboard.
Accessing this is quite simple:
1. Go to settings
2. Find general
3. Click software update
After the update has installed, users can go into iMessage and compose a message as usual. When users goes to their emoji keyboard, they will be introduced to a whole new look. Instead of the pages of emojis, users will now be able to vertically scroll back and forth through the emojis.
Long-pressing enables selection of a “people” emoji, and users will be asked to change the color of that emoji. Sadly, the selection of couple and family emojis do not have this feature, and are a bright yellow color similar to the smiling emojis.
However, the people that are engaging in athletic activities along with the “sassy girl” emoji can be changed into different races.
Whenever the user wishes to use that emoji, the default color of the emoji will be of the one the user picked last.
To get OS X devices to do this, the user must be running on the 10.10.3 or later software. By pressing Command-Control-Space Bar at the same time, a long-press will result in the choice to change the race of that emoji.
Emoji’s are supposed to show your emotions as a character, and this new selection of races is just what we all needed. This addition of racial diversity to the selection of emojis has been long anticipated, and it is clear that this development has received a positive reaction from Apple users, though some users are still searching for the taco emoji.
