Apple Unveils New Emojis in iOS 26.4 Beta Update (and the Distorted Face Is Already the Internet’s Favourite)

Apple Unveils New Emojis in iOS 26.4 Beta Update (and the Distorted Face Is Already the Internet’s Favourite)

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Apple is rolling out new emojis with iOS 26.4 beta 4, including a distorted face emoji that’s taking the internet by storm.

Apple is dropping a new batch of emojis with the upcoming iOS 26.4 beta 4 update, and they are delightfully weird. The real star of the bunch, though, is a distorted face emoji that looks like it’s having a full-blown existential crisis.

Ambiguous and slightly unhinged, the emoji has already started making the rounds online. It’s especially resonating with Gen Z, the terminally online crowd fluent in esoteric memes, cursed reaction pics and TikTok lingo (rizz, delulu, and what have you).

With just one tiny, wobbly face, Apple may have just inadvertently tapped into the internet’s zeitgeist and captured the endless chaos of digital culture perfectly. Sometimes, when words fall short, emojis do get the point across.

The distorted face emoji comes with quite the supporting cast: a trombone, a treasure chest, an orca, a ballet dancer (in different skin tones), a landslide, a Bigfoot-like hairy creature and a Looney Tunes–style cartoon fight cloud.

The soon-to-release update delivers 163 emoji designs in total, including 13 completely new concepts and 150 skin tone variations for the wrestling and people-with-bunny-ears emojis.

These eight emojis were reviewed and approved back in the summer of 2025 by the Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit organisation which has been in charge of signing off on emoji designs since 2010.

Access to the latest updates is currently limited to participants in Apple’s Beta Software Program. Meanwhile, Apple is still keeping the official iOS 26.4 release date under wraps, with a wider public rollout expected in the near future.

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