Emoji lovers prepare yourself for a host of new little icons to spice up your messages.

Apple has announced an exciting line-up featuring a lime, a phoenix, a brown mushroom, a broken metal chain, and more than 100 people, erm, facing sideways.

The emoji set, 15.1, will add 118 new emojis which were recommended for release and approved back in September.

Now, the cute icons will be fully available with the latest iOS update – iOS 17.4, which is due to arrive on a phone near you in spring.

The new additions were approved by the Unicode Consortium, the central bank of all approved emojis.

‘The new emojis in today’s beta release are drawn from Unicode’s September 2023 recommendations – Emoji 15.1,’ said Keith Broni, editor-in-chief of Emojipedia, a member of the consortium.

‘Based on past iOS beta history it’s likely that the final public release of iOS 17.4 will come to users in March or April 2024.’

The new batch consists of a lime, a phoenix, a brown mushroom and a broken metal chain, as well as a few new smiley faces shaking their heads and four gender-neutral family emojis.

The families consists of two parents and a child, one parent and two children, one parent and one child, and two parents and two children.

Side profiles of a diverse set of people walking and running, specifying race and disabilities, will also be added to the ever-growing catalogue.

Currently, the six existing people emojis are a person walking, a person running, a person kneeling, a person with a cane, a person in a motorised wheelchair and a person in a manual wheelchair.

However, the list does not include any new flag emojis, which was a decision made earlier this year.

Emojipedia said this decision was made because of the ‘transient nature’ of many pride flags, and the ‘challenges including some identities while excluding others’.

Many of the emojis have already been released to Samsung users and look a little different, with more cartoonish aspects for the fruit and mushrooms.

Last month, Mr Broni revealed the most-used emojis of 2023, with the ‘crying with laughter’ face topping the table.

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