Gboard on Android will now let you easily set your own default skin tone and gender
Gboard on Android is now rolling out the ability to set a default skin tone for your favorite emoji. We have been able to change skin tone for emoji in the past, but now changing it applies to all supported emoji at once.
As announced by Google, the ability to choose a default skin tone and gender is rolling out to Gboard today on Android. This can be set by long-pressing on one of the many emoji that support skin tone customization, which you can discern by noting the small arrow on the bottom right of each emoji, and then selecting the desired skin tone.
This has always been the process in the past, however, now when you make the change to one emoji, all the emoji in that same category change with it. For example, making the change to the "Flexed Biceps" emoji, changes all the emoji that contain a hand or fingers. Same thing goes for emoji under the "People" category, where you can not only change the skin tone, but also the gender.
In the past, doing this only changed that one emoji and only for that one use, while now it persists within the application until you change it again. It really is shocking that this hasn't been a feature until now. Emojis have become part of day to day communication, even in most business settings.
Imagine how difficult typing would be if you had to long-press each letter to change it to a capital letter, then do it again to get a lowercase letter. This would be painful, slow and frustrating. And yet, when we want to modify the appearance of our emoji’s color or gender presentation, that’s exactly what we have to suffer through. - Google
Google stated that in most emoji keyboards, it would take over 300 taps to set the tone and gender for every single emoji. Multiply that by the times you would have to do this for every text or chat application you use. This is a great deal of taps when you consider emoji to be such a casual way of expressing oneself. Hopefully, this feature will be a huge time-saver for those that love to use emoji in their texts.
FCC OKs Cingular\'s purchase of AT&T Wireless
Things that are NOT allowed: