How to find emojis on keyboard

If you're on iOS, the keyboard can be a little tricky to find. You'll want to go to Settings > General, then scroll down and tap on Keyboard. Below a handful of toggle settings like Auto-Capitalization is the Keyboards setting. Tap that, then tap "Add New Keyboard." There, sandwiched between non-English language keyboards is the Emoji keyboard. Select it. Now you should have two keyboards installed. When you go to type out a message, email, or social media status update, now a grid-laden globe icon is in the lower left of your iOS keyboard. You can tap it to access a vast trove of emoji, everything from Christmas trees, to baby chicks, to winking smileys.

For those Android users lucky enough to own a new KitKat-running device, all you have to do is press and hold the enter or search key to get at its new built-in emoji keyboard. In some apps, it'll add an emoji smiley icon in the lower right. If you've got an older Android device, you can download the Android KitKat keyboard APK to get KitKat's keyboard.

To do that, which (warning!) will modify your Android experience with third party software and could potentially muck up your handset, follow these steps:

• Go to Settings, Security, and check "Unknown Sources" to give yourself the ability to install software from sources other than Google Play
• Download the Android 4.4 keyboard APK either directly on your device, or on your computer, then transfer it later. Android Police has three mirrors for the download at the link.
• On your device, tap the finished download and follow onscreen installer prompts. You can install from Google Drive or Dropbox if you're getting prompts to use unrelated programs during this process
• After installation, follow Google's setup tutorial.

If you own an older Android device and don't want to go through the above installation, you're only options are to stick with an app like Whatsapp that supports its own emoji keyboard, or to install a third-party emoji keyboard. Results vary by phone model.

Keep these shortcuts close by to quickly and easily add emojis to your content. First up is a Buffer shortcut, then Mac and Windows shortcuts.

On Buffer: Add emojis with our emoji picker

We added an emoji picker to the Buffer composer so you can add emojis to your social media content in just a few clicks:

To make things even faster, you can even type : (colon) followed by the emoji name, just like in Slack!

For Mac keyboards: Use CTRL + CMD + Space

You can use this shortcut in macOS (any Apple laptop or desktop). On your iPhone or iPad, be sure to keep up with iOS updates to have access to all emojis.

1. Click on any text field

Position your cursor in a text field where you’d like to add an emoji. For example, you can do this in a Buffer post

2. Press Command + Control + Space

Hold the Command and Control keys on your Mac keyboard and then press Space:

3. Choose your emoji from the list

You’ll now see the emoji keyboard palette launch within your screen:

You can scroll through all the available emojis and categories (People, Nature, Food & Drink, Celebration, Activity, Travel & Places, and Objects & Symbols) or search the full list of emojis from the search box at the top of the window.

4. Click to add the emoji to your text

Once you’ve found the emoji you’d like to add, click on it, and it’ll appear in your text box to the left of the cursor:

For Windows: Add emojis on a standard keyboard or the Touch Keyboard

For Microsoft Windows keyboards, there are two shortcuts, depending on the device you’re using. Note: These screenshots may look slightly different based on which operating system you’re on.

1. Open the standard emoji keyboard

The keyboard shortcut for non-touchscreen Windows computers is Windows + ; (semi-colon) or Windows + . (period) to access your emojis.

2. Open the Touch Keyboard

Click or tap the Touch Keyboard icon in the bottom right corner of your screen (seen in the screenshot), then follow the steps below.

Note: If you don’t see the Touch Keyboard option on your desktop, this guide will help you to enable it. You can also search “touch keyboard” on your device, which should help you find your Touch Keyboard settings with the option to enable it.

3. Click the square icon to enable the emoji Touch Keyboard

Once the keyboard window has opened, click on the square icon with a heart in it at the top left of the touch keyboard.

4. Choose your emoji

Your keyboard will now add an emoji keyboard like in the screenshot:

Whichever keyboard you use, you can search emojis by name and then tap or click on the one you want to use. Easy as 🥧.

Emojis make an impact on your social media marketing

Emojis are incredibly fun, and they can also help increase the reach of your social media posts and boost engagement.

For example, internet marketer Larry Kim ran a quick experiment where he split-tested the same promoted post with and without emojis to the same targeting group at the same time. The results of this experiment were pretty impressive. The emoji version had 25.4% higher engagement and a 22.2% lower cost per engagement ($0.18 vs. $0.14).

And in an updated emoji experiment from 2021, Kim noted there was an instance where Google Ads with emojis were served 10% more than ads without emojis.