Apple Seeds Second Beta of iOS 11.1 to Developers and Public Beta Testers With New Emoji

Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming iOS 11.1 update to developers, nearly two weeks releasing the first iOS 11.1 beta and a few weeks after releasing the iOS 11 update to the public.

Registered developers can download the iOS 11 beta from Apple's Developer Center or over-the-air once the proper configuration profile has been installed from the Developer Center.

ios 11
Apple said the second beta of iOS 11.1 introduces a range of new Unicode 10 emoji like crazy face, pie, pretzel, t-rex, vampire, exploding head, face vomiting, shushing face, love you gesture, brain, scarf, zebra, giraffe, fortune cookie, pie, hedgehog, and more.

ios11emoji1
Several emoji have also seen some small design changes in iOS 11.1, including the dolphin, octopus, bee, snail, and whale characters, among others.

ios111emojiupdates
A few other small features were discovered in the initial iOS 11.1 beta. The built-in keyboard in iOS 11.1 now offers up multiple emoji symbols when using an emoji-related word like "cake" or "happy," with each of the suggestions displayed at the end of the predictive text suggestions. There's also an updated camera icon under Restrictions, a new animation when tapping the status bar to scroll upwards, and a faster unlock animation.

iOS 11 marks a major update to the operating system with systemwide design tweaks, a new Lock screen experience, a revamped Control Center, ARKit, new app features, and an entirely new interface for the iPad that includes a Dock, Drag and Drop support, and a redesigned App Switcher for better than ever multitasking.

Update: Apple has also released the second beta of iOS 11.1 to public beta testers.

Related Forum: iOS 11

Popular Stories

Apple Logo Black

Apple Just Made Its Second-Biggest Acquisition Ever After Beats

Thursday January 29, 2026 10:07 am PST by
Apple today confirmed to Reuters that it has acquired Q.ai, an Israeli startup that is working on artificial intelligence technology for audio. Apple paid close to $2 billion for Q.ai, according to sources cited by the Financial Times. That would make this Apple's second-biggest acquisition ever, after it paid $3 billion for the popular headphone and audio brand Beats in 2014. Q.ai has...
Aston Martin CarPlay Ultra Screen

Apple's CarPlay Ultra to Expand to These Vehicle Brands Later This Year

Sunday February 1, 2026 10:08 am PST by
Last year, Apple launched CarPlay Ultra, the long-awaited next-generation version of its CarPlay software system for vehicles. Nearly nine months later, CarPlay Ultra is still limited to Aston Martin's latest luxury vehicles, but that should change fairly soon. In May 2025, Apple said many other vehicle brands planned to offer CarPlay Ultra, including Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis. In his Powe...
14 inch MacBook Pro Keyboard

Apple Changes How You Order a Mac

Saturday January 31, 2026 10:51 am PST by
Apple recently updated its online store with a new ordering process for Macs, including the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro. There used to be a handful of standard configurations available for each Mac, but now you must configure a Mac entirely from scratch on a feature-by-feature basis. In other words, ordering a new Mac now works much like ordering an...
Apple Logo Black

Apple's Next Launch is 'Imminent'

Sunday February 1, 2026 12:31 pm PST by
The calendar has turned to February, and a new report indicates that Apple's next product launch is "imminent," in the form of new MacBook Pro models. "All signs point to an imminent launch of next-generation MacBook Pros that retain the current form factor but deliver faster chips," Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said on Sunday. "I'm told the new models — code-named J714 and J716 — are slated...
Apple MacBook Pro M4 hero

New MacBook Pros Reportedly Launching Alongside macOS 26.3

Sunday February 1, 2026 5:42 am PST by
Apple is planning to launch new MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips alongside macOS 26.3, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. "Apple's faster MacBook Pros are planned for the macOS 26.3 release cycle," wrote Gurman, in his Power On newsletter today. "I'm told the new models — code-named J714 and J716 — are slated for the macOS 26.3 software cycle, which runs from...

Top Rated Comments

dan9700 Avatar
109 months ago
People honestly are more excited about dam Emojis sad times we live in
Score: 31 Votes (Like | Disagree)
CarlJ Avatar
109 months ago
I still find hard to believe how much time, publicity and resources Apple throws into such a puny tangent such as emojis, ...
I'll try to make this simple:

Apple supports the Unicode standard for encoding characters stored on iOS and macOS, because, frankly, using any other coding system would be insane (the entire world has moved to Unicode for good reasons).

The Unicode Consortium has a group that is responsible for approving the addition of new characters and character sets to the Unicode standard, and they keep accepting new emoji characters.

Apple, in order to comply with the Unicode standard, has a few graphic artists (not software developers) design new images to go with the newly assigned emoji (and other characters). (Note also that small images are highly unlikely to break other software on the system, so such changes are comparatively easy to push through, unlike many of the more complicated software bugs.)

Apple publishes software (like this beta) that includes the new symbols (amongst many other changes) in order to keep abreast of the standards, and they don't particularly publicize the new emoji, those usually get little more than a bullet point buried in the release notes.

News/rumors sites (which you are reading of your own volition) like MacRumors (not Apple), publicize the new Unicode characters added, and, predictably, such articles get a huge number of hits by people eager to complain about new emoji in iOS/macOS.

If you want to complain, complain directly to the Unicode Consortium ('http://unicode.org/consortium/consort.html') about how they should stop adding new emoji to the Unicode character set, and/or complain directly to MacRumors (not on page 5 of the comments, but write directly to the site's owners, their email addresses are at the bottom of the site's front page) about how much coverage they give to new emoji added to Apple's OS's. Complaining about it on page 5 of the comments here only makes you feel good.
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Michael Goff Avatar
109 months ago
Honestly Apple, can they just get their ****ing priorities right for once?
Agreed. We should move the artists that make the emoji over to fixing bugs. That’s how it works, right?
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Michael Goff Avatar
109 months ago
iOS 11 is an absolute mess, but thank 8 pound, 6 ounce Newborn Baby Jesus that we have a female vampire emoji. I dont know what I would have done without it.
Never understood this type of response. Do you think the people who make emoji are capable of fixing crashes and graphical glitches?
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DaveOP Avatar
109 months ago
Home button delay not fixed and 3d touch still bad i bet but guess what guys new Emojis wow omg
I bet 90% or more of iPhone users use emoji every day, and I bet 99% or more of them would not complain about home button lag, if polled. What would you work on, if you were Apple?

Edit: I assume you understand that the same artists designing emoji would not be fixing your perceived issues.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DaveMcM76 Avatar
109 months ago
People do know that the new emojis are all part of supporting the latest Unicode standards don’t they? Apple aren’t just making them up and adding them for the sake of it...
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)