Hooray – the gay emoji you’ve all been waiting for have finally arrived!

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A range of emoji featuring same-sex couples and families with same-sex parents has been unveiled by Apple.

The new emoji were released as part of iOS update 8.3, which was rolled out on Wednesday.

Among the additions are families which have same-sex parents, gay and lesbian couples kissing and faces with different skin tones.

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A proposal for the diversification of emoji was announced last year by the Unicode Consortium, a body which develops software standards, and Apple unveiled the new graphics earlier this year.

While emoji featuring same-sex couples and racially diverse characters were limited to only a handful previously, the update, when released, includes 300 new symbols, including faces with different skin tones.

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Some have been critical of the fact that the same-sex couples are only available in one skin tone, but have expressed hopes that the next update will be more diverse yet.

Last year a US-based designer noticed important images missing from the average smartphone library, and created a range of lesbian-themed emojis.

Back in 2012, Apple introduced same-sex couple related emoji for the first time in a version of its iPhone and iPad operating system, iOS 6.

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