Introduction

Everyone uses emoji — pictographs that provide emotional cues for interpreting typed conversations or even replace words or phrases. Although they appear to be images, they’re actually a standardized list of Unicode characters sent as plain text. A viewing device renders the appropriate image in its own font, so the actual displayed image might be different or unknown on different operating systems. Because emoji are text, they adjust their presentation to match the surrounding text’s size, color, etc.

Genmoji is Apple’s new AI tool that allows users to generate emoji-like images by typing prompts like “cat with a halo and forked tail”. You might have used similar tools in ChatGPT or Instagram. Unlike emoji, Genmoji are images — unique, rasterized bitmaps. They can’t be described by Unicode text characters, and they display exactly the same on every Apple device.

Before iOS 18, users couldn’t enter images alongside (inline with) text. When you attach a sticker to a message, it’s not part of the message text. It’s easy to type emoji into your text — tap a button to switch to the emoji keyboard, then search or scroll to find the one you want. The iOS 18 emoji keyboard adds the user’s personalized content — Stickers, Memoji, Animoji, and Genmoji. Wherever your app pops up a keyboard, your users can enter an emoji-like image alongside text, and your app must display it like an emoji, including adjusting it to match the text’s attributes.

Apple’s introducing a new API to help you do this — NSAdaptiveImageGlyph. You use it with NSAttributedString and NSMutableAttributedString to support rich text in your app.

Note: Apple uses the collective term custom emoji to encompass Stickers, Memoji, Animoji, and Genmoji. Keep in mind, these are all images, not Unicode.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this lesson:

• Explain how Genmoji and emoji are different.
• Explain how Genmoji can be used alongside text.
• Understand key features of NSAdaptiveImageGlyph.