Using Apple's emoji in your application can now get your app rejected.

I’ve been using Apple’s emoji in my apps for a few years now, not the smiley faces, but the system like icons as they’re easy to add into places where it gets more awkward to mix text and icons. Now that’s a rejection reason.

So if you use Apple’s emoji in your application and want to ship on the app store, you can only use it in a text field that the user can edit.

https://mashable.com/2018/02/07/apple-rejecting-apps-over-emoji/#xd0E7dPgsOqE

Same for iOS apps. :frowning:
I recently updated an iOS app using Emojis in the screenshots only, it was accepted, but might be rejected on next update.

If you are looking for a good source of icons to replace the Emojis, you might want to have a look at icons8.com
Alternatives: https://github.com/twitter/twemoji and https://www.emojione.com

Which ones are the “system” icons? Can the smileys be used or not?

The smileys are the system icons.

is it only what’s in the “emoji” section, or all arrows, signs, special caracters ?

I was using some of the ‘object’ icons (and in our greetings card application, a whole lot more). But you cannot use the smileys, so you must use your own or a 3rd Party.

My understanding is that Apple is asserting their copyright over their emoji characters. This would include anything that Apple consider emoji (which IMHO is a gray area). I think that you’ll be okay with accented characters and I would image ‘arrows’ should be accepted, but I guess any of the emoji that looks like a graphic in Apple’s emoji style is what they’re going after.