Thumbs up emoji is facing the wrong way on iPhone

Well let’s hurry up and get that update out

As already stated, the Unicode Consortium is responsible for emojis, not Apple. Nor does Apple monitor these forums so telling us to "hurry up and get that update out" or describing how you think it should be is just a waste of time.

You can make a request here -

https://unicode.org/emoji/emoji-requests.html

Jackjack55 wrote:

why does the thumbs down face the wrong way. You see you’d think when I used the thumbs up the arm part would face towards my side of the screen because I’m the one using it but in reality this is not the case it faces towards the other side which means that the thumbs up will never be facing the right way on either screen. This is ridiculous and detrimental to my mental health. Please fix this.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Emojis thumb

Do you mean this thumbs down? 👎

I think you may be the first person I've ever seen suggest the thumb should face a different direction. It can be right handed or left handed depending on the platform, from what I've read, but honestly, it's just an emoji which is used to disagree with someone and I really don't think whether its right handed or left handed makes any difference at all.

We can't answer why questions here. This is a user to user only forum. We don't work for Apple or the Unicode Consortium who is the entity responsible for all Emojis. You are more than welcome to provide feedback to Apple here --> Product Feedback - Apple

Jackjack55 wrote:

My thing is that the thumb should be facing to the right when I text and to the left when my texting partner text as you show which side it’s coming from.

Convince the Unicode Emoji committee of the error of their existing design and the correctness of your new interpretation, and particularly the creation of a chirality scheme which AFAIK does not currently exist within Unicode or maybe a (very) creative interpretation of byte ordering mark (which is itself already a bit of a mess), and then those many organizations implementing the Unicode standard will follow, including Apple.

Chirality for several (many? most?) emojis is seemingly going to be fun just as soon as string comparisons and such are involved, too.

Servant of Cats wrote:

Not to mention that if you are so sensitive to the exact graphics used, you could create a “sticker” (photo) and use it in text messages instead of an emoji.

I’d thought about that, though there might be a wrinkle there: depending on which people in then discuss need to have their hand emojis reversed, Jackjack55 may not be able to resolve this by themselves. Depending on the chirality required, it would need the other parties in the conversation to mirror their own emojis by sending only the reversed image.

Or the other parties not sending hand emojis ever, which avoids the reverse. And is easier.

Not sending emojis ever would probably be the easiest, as the other people and Jackjack55 can either not send those, or can all add keyboard shortcuts that replace the emoji with “okay” or ”no” or whatever text is appropriate. That’s a few replacements implemented for each common conversation participant once, and eliminates the deeply problematic emojis entirely.

I don’t know of a way to prevent reception of the problematic hand emojis, which would arguably be the best solution here.

The Unicode Consortium's original guideline for that glyph, as well as the ones most systems use to actually implement it, have it pointed that way. Changing it would require either using a custom font which points it differently, or an OS update to change the preloaded ones.

(263986)

Re: “This is ridiculous and detrimental to my mental health. Please fix this.”

This is a user to user forum. You are not speaking to Apple. Furthermore, if the appearance of the emoji is actually “detrimental to [your] mental health,” you need professional medical help beyond the scope of what this forum can give.

While the Unicode Consortium decides which symbols become emojis, they only issue guidelines for the glyphs which represent them; Apple and other font creators design the ones actually used.

(263988)

Not to mention that if you are so sensitive to the exact graphics used, you could create a “sticker” (photo) and use it in text messages instead of an emoji.

Jackjack55 wrote:

..This is ridiculous and detrimental to my mental health. Please fix this.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Emojis thumb

In my day we didn't have mental health (or we kept quiet about it)

Kilgore-Trout wrote:

Then perhaps you should give up texting and seek professional help

Or at the very least, stop using emojis. I've been saying for years that they are detrimental to literacy. But I don't think that's what the OP means.

True but I doubt there is a option to choose between left and right handed.

Jackjack55 wrote:

This is ridiculous and detrimental to my mental health. Please fix this.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Emojis thumb

Oh please, give us a break will you.

Jackjack55 wrote:

…This is ridiculous and detrimental to my mental health…

Then perhaps you should give up texting and seek professional help