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Emoji, the colorful and expressive characters, are small photos that allow users to convey their emotions and ideas in digital text. These icons range from facial expressions to food items, animals, buildings, flags and so much more. In this guide, we will show you how to use emoji on your Mac and take advantage of these fun and expressive characters.
How to Add Emoji to Text on a Mac
Your first step in using emoji on your Mac is to access the emoji menu, which is relatively simple. Most applications that support emoji offer a similar process. You can try using the shortcut Ctrl + Cmd + space bar, which should invoke the emoji picker in most applications.
You can also open the “Edit” drop-down menu in the top bar and look for the “Special Characters” option (or “Characters” or “Emoji and Characters” depending on the software and macOS version you’re using). For example, in TextEdit, select Edit > Special Characters (or cmd + alt + T) to open the Characters panel, then select Emoji from the left menu.
In addition to TextEdit, these methods work in Safari, Chrome, Opera, Firefox, Mail, iTunes, TweetDeck, the Mac App Store, and many other third-party applications.
Using Emoji on Mac with Touch Bar support
If you have a newer MacBook Pro model with a Touch Bar, you have quick access to emoji characters. The Touch Bar is context-sensitive, and in most text input contexts, it offers at least one button which activates your emoji library. Tap the button to launch a swipeable emoji bar with recently used, food, faces, nature, and other sections.
If you’ve activated predictive text, the Touch Bar offers emoji as suggestions too. For example, if you type the word “happy,” the QuickType keyboard on iOS offers the appropriate emoji.
Differences Between Working Systems
While the emoji Unicode system is universal, different companies interpret emoji differently. For example, Apple replaced the gun emoji with a water gun in response to gun violence in the U.S. However, Android and other operating systems still represent it as a gun. Additionally, there are other slight differences between emoji between different systems – such as Samsung’s unique take on certain emojis.
FAQs
1. Can I use emoji in any application on my Mac?
Most applications support emoji on macOS. However, there are some exceptions. If you cannot access the emoji menu in a specific application, it probably does not support emoji.
2. Can I add custom emoji to my Mac?
Unfortunately, you cannot add custom emoji to the standard macOS. However, there are third-party applications available that offer additional emoji options for you to use!