X (formerly Twitter) quietly redesigned the 🔫 water gun emoji to display it as a firearm, which differs from the cross-platform conversion of this emoji from a firearm to a water gun from 2016 to 2018.
Social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has redesigned its 🔫 water gun emoji to display it as an actual firearm. The redesign differs from designs from all other major emoji vendors, reversing the emoji’s cross-platform conversion from a firearm to one that was made available from 2016 to 2018.
Above: Twitter’s water gun design compared to X’s new redesign of the emoji as a firearm.
The update is available through X’s web client, where the Twemoji emoji design set will still appear. The rollout began on July 18, the day after World Emoji Day 2024.
Update Notice 📢
x dot com changed the gun emoji back to its original form, an m1911.
🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫 https://t.co/FlXJtOpU3H pic.twitter.com/cqd7KHcxUJ
— Kace (@yacineMTB) July 18, 2024
In February 2023, the Twemoji set was retired from Twitter/X on mobile devices and replaced with the device’s native emoji design, meaning this update will not appear on Android devices.
The Twitter/X app for iOS has always used the native emojis provided by Apple.
As mentioned above, this change by X effectively reverses the cross-vendor redesign of the 🔫 Water Gun emoji (formerly known as the 🔫 Pistol emoji) that was fully implemented in 2018 following Apple’s much-publicized redesign in 2016.
Above: A comparison of pistol emoji designs from major vendors from 2013 to 2018.
This is the first update to the version of the original Twemoji emoji design set used by X since July last year, when designs were updated for the 😷 Face wearing a medical mask, 🥺 Pleading face and 🥹 Face holding back tears emoji.
Additionally, since October 2022, another branch of Twemoji has been maintained on Github by former Twemoji designer Justine De Caires. This fork remains open source and has contributions from Discord designers.
The Twemoji-derived 🔫 Water Gun emoji used on Discord remains the same design that was first implemented on Twitter in 2018.