Apple is expanding its support for emoji characters — while giving users some important parental controls.
The tech giant on Monday unveiled new Memoji characters that allow you to create emoji characters based on how you look. The feature is similar to the Animoji Apple released last year with the iPhone X that let you create animal-based emoji that tracked your face movements and recorded your voice to send different kinds of messages to friends. With Memoji, it now gives you personalized emoji and lets you tweak your Memoji to modify facial hair, eyewear, and more — including a fun, new ‘tongue detection’ feature for making even sillier faces.
In a statement, Apple said that the Memoji feature is designed to give you “a set of inclusive and diverse characteristics to form a unique personality.”
The amount of work that went into Memoji is absolutely wild. Cool small detail: it supports a bunch of religious headwear. Hijabs, turbans, etc.
— Noah Witherspoon (@mahalis) June 4, 2018
Get Data Sheet, Coins2Day’s technology newsletter
The news came as Apple also showcased new parental controls that aim at limiting screen time for children.
The feature gives parents insight, through the Activity Report, into how their children are using their iPhones and iPads and gives them the option with ‘Allowances’ to set when and for how long their kids can use certain apps. The feature also gives parents the ability to control their kids’ access to app categories. So if they want to stop them from using games or social media apps often, for instance, they just set their children’s Allowances accordingly.
Parental controls might be the most exciting announcement thus far. T-Rex Animoji is a close 2nd, because I have a 3-year old who is obsessed with dinosaurs.
— meinck (@meinck) June 4, 2018
Allowances also works remotely, and parents can manage a child’s device from their own iPhone or iPad.
The Memoji and parental controls are coming to Apple’s iOS 12 later this year.