Right now, you have to download a separate app [1] if you want to use diverse emoji since they're not on the legitimate emoji keyboard. But the Unicode Consortium — an organization that creates emoji and standardizes text across all software — wants to change all that. This week, it released a new proposal [2] edited by Apple and Google engineers that says emoji should be displayed in different skin tones. Hooray!

"People all over the world want to have emoji that reflect more human diversity, especially for skin tone," reads the report. "The Unicode emoji characters for people and body parts are meant to be generic, yet following the precedents set by the original Japanese carrier images, they are often shown with a light skin tone instead of a more generic (inhuman) appearance, such as a yellow/orange color or a silhouette."

It gets even better: this would work by letting people choose from different skin-tone swatches to modify each emoji. Plus, it would be available for the human emoji, hand symbols, and other body parts.

There's no exact date for when this will be available on your phone, but the latest Unicode 8.0 update is expected mid-2015 and could include the change. Fingers (of all skin colors) crossed.