So, if you get texts or see posts on your phone with something that looks like this in the emoji line up, you may have wondered, what the? Why would so-and-so emoji me with a mean, scary alien face in a box?
Not on purpose, that’s the answer.
In early April, Apple released an update to its iPhone and Mac operating systems which included new emoji characters and symbols, including national flags and more racially-diverse emoji characters and families. You’ll see them if you’re running iOS 8.3 or OS X 10.10.3.
However, if you are not, it turns out you might see the old, standard emoji characters paired with an alien instead of the new diverse emoji. Or you might just see a white square.
iPhone users who are still using iOS 8.2 and below will see the alien face, housed inside a black square. Google’s mobile operating system does not yet recognise the changes in skin-tone and will simply revert to the standard variation of the emoji. And some web browsers, including Chrome, simply show an empty box.
If you want access to the new emojis and symbols, you simply need to update your iPhone or iPad to iOS 8.3 or Mac to OS 10.10.3. But even if YOU do that, given how infrequently everyone else updates their mobile OS, your friends end up seeing a lot of white boxes — with or without aliens — for some time.
