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Gmail’s new emoji picker on the web is getting a long overdue upgrade

You’ll be to pick skin tones and gender preferences thanks to a new arrow next to certain emoji.

You’ll be to pick skin tones and gender preferences thanks to a new arrow next to certain emoji.

Gmail logo
Gmail logo
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Jay Peters
is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.

Gmail’s emoji picker on the web is getting a long overdue upgrade that lets you pick skin tones and gender preferences for certain emoji, Google announced in a blog post on Wednesday.

Previously, when composing emails in Gmail on the web, if you used the emoji picker, there was no way to select a skin tone or gender preference for certain emoji like hand gestures or emoji featuring people. You could still add emoji with skin tones or certain genders to those emails in other ways, such as copying and pasting the emoji from Emojipedia, but that’s obviously not the most ideal solution.

Google is changing that starting Wednesday. With Gmail’s new emoji picker, you’ll be able to pick skin tones and gender preferences by clicking a little arrow that shows up next to emoji where those options are available.

A screenshot of Gmail’s previous emoji picker.
A screenshot of Gmail’s new emoji picker.
Gmail’s old emoji picker (left) vs. the new emoji picker (right).
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge and Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

It’s a good solution. The new emoji picker is already available in my personal Gmail, and I suspect it’ll show up in my work Gmail soon enough; in its blog post, Google details a couple different rollout schedules.

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