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

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.

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.