Among the various emoji updates in Apple's iOS 18.4, users might notice that Syria's flag emoji has been changed to reflect the rapid developments that have taken place since December.
The new flag emoji now has three red stars in the centre on a white backdrop and a green stripe at the top. The older flag emoji had a red stripe at the top and featured two green stars on the centre white stripe.
Former president Bashar Al Assad’s fall from power in December prompted many at the time to display what was widely considered to be the country's opposition flag, which features three stars and green, white and black stripes.
This has led to calls for the flag, first used in the 1940s after independence from France, to officially replace the country's current banner, which was adopted in 1980 under former president and Bashar Al Assad's father, Hafez.
Those calls spilled over into the digital world, with many Syrians pushing for the flag to be available as an emoji on their phones.
Calls were so strong that the Unicode Consortium, the authority charged with standardising emoji codes and digital characters across billions of smartphones and mobile devices globally, had to clarify its role.
Unicode told The National at the time that the design and colours of emojis are up to smartphone and mobile device makers, not Unicode. Unicode also referred The National to a blog post from 2022 titled The Past and Present of the Flag Emoji, in which the consortium announced that it would no longer be accepting flag emoji submissions.
“The inclusion of new flags will always continue to emphasise the exclusion of others,” the blog entry reads in part. "And there isn’t much room for the fluid nature of politics – countries change but Unicode additions are forever – once a character is added it can never be removed.
“We realise closing this door may come as a disappointment – after all, flags often serve as a rallying cry to be seen, heard, recognised and understood,” Unicode added, while also pointing out that “font designers can always update the designs as regimes change.”
Unicode also stated that despite being the largest emoji category, flags are some of the least used, with a few exceptions such as the rainbow flag. It said it can be cumbersome and time-consuming to encode more flag standards across the board.
Several years before Unicode's 2022 flag emoji freeze announcement, Nato tried unsuccessfully to convince the consortium to lay the groundwork for the political and military alliance to have its own flag emoji.
The Unicode Consortium does occasionally add new emojis based on ideas submitted to its subcommittee, but the responsibility is on the submitter to prove there is justification for the new design. Ultimately, how the emojis look is up to the operating system, smartphone and device makers.
The former Syrian flag features horizontal stripes of red, white and black from top to bottom, common colours to represent Arab unity.
Two green stars adorn the middle white section, representing Egypt and Syria as the founding nations of the short-lived United Arab Republic formed after the end of European colonialism.
It was first designed in 1958, but the flag was modified several times before its adoption in the 1980s.
