You may have heard about the Live Long And Prosper emoji coming to iOS, as well as expanding the emoji keyboard to include a wider variety of skin tones.
As for the expanded emoji keyboard, first of all it’s a continuous scroll from left to right, showing all the emoji available (with a handy title for each section) as opposed to before when you had to tap the tabs to select from different panels. You can tap the options to jump to each selection if you prefer, but the scrolling is really smooth and works pretty well.
Behold the minifig-tastic yellowness of the emoji now!
You can see the “default” color of the faces and hands now is more of a Simpsons shade of yellow. If you want to change that to a different tone, simply long tap the emoji you want and you’ll see the range of colors pop up in a menu, with the minifig color option at the left. Note that when you choose a non-Simpsons version, the emoji remembers that choice and makes it the default for the next time you choose it.
Here's the skin tones to choose from if Simpsons Yellow doesn't suit you.
Here’s a bonus tip: We know the Vulcan Salute which means “Live Long And Prosper” is part of the emoji set now, but sadly it is not shown on the stock iOS 8.3 keyboard yet. So here’s how to get it:
First, copy the actual character out of this tweet:
Live Long And Prosper. �� Peace And Long Life.
— The Mac Observer (@MacObserver) April 9, 2015
Note: If you get a weird looking box, it’s because you need to update to either 10.10.3 or 8.3, depending on the screen you’re using.
When you have the salute in your clipboard, go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts and tap the plus sign. In the “Phrase” field, paste the emoji. In Shortcut, type the abbreviation you wish to use to get this to appear. If you want to do this on your Mac instead, you can add it by going to System Preferences > Keyboard > Text and creating it there. (Bonus: If you use the same Apple ID on your Mac and your iPhone, doing this one place will make it show in the other. Magic!)
So there you have it. Now you can add some color to your emoji, and wish people well thanks to an iOS update!