Emoji have taken over the world, so there’s a good chance that you regularly use (or abuse) emoji on your iPhone keyboard just like everyone else. But before emojis were popular, there were emojis, also known as emoticons, and iOS has a secret emoji keyboard waiting for you to unlock it.
Emojis may not be the bright, colorful icons we’ve come to love on smartphones, but they’re equally cute expressions with many features and looks that emojis haven’t come up with yet. “Shrug”(¯\_(?)_/¯) may have been the most used typographic character in the past until Apple added the shrug emoji.
Typically, you enter emoji expressions manually, but your current keyboard may not have all the Unicode characters to perform each emoji. There is also copy/paste from the web, but that’s too much work. Another way to more easily type emojis is to assign them to keyboard shortcuts.
If you’re planning to dive into emoji to complement your emoji skills, nothing beats the convenience of a built-in emoji keyboard. And if you’re asking yourself why you’ve never seen or heard of this iPhone keyboard before, it might be because you don’t speak Japanese or Chinese.
Step 1. Add a Japanese or Chinese keyboard.
Open the Settings app, then go to General -> Keyboard -> Keyboards -> Add New Keyboard. Next, find the emoji library keyboard. Any of the keyboards below will work, but in this tutorial, I’ll showcase the Kana and Romaji keyboards. The first is a click-style keyboard that allows hiragana typing but also has an English keyboard. The latter uses romanized characters that native English speakers will recognize to help form words in Japanese.
- Japanese – Kana
- Japanese – romaji
- Chinese Simplified (any version)
- Chinese Traditional (any version)
It might be wise to install Kana, Romaji, and some Chinese keyboards as some emojis are not available on all of them. Once selected, click Done to return to the Keyboards page.
If you want to change the order of the keyboards that will change on iOS, tap Edit, tap and hold three lines on the keyboard you want to move, then drag it to the desired location. Click “Done”to save your changes.
- More Info: How to Add, Switch, Reorder, and Remove iPhone Keyboards
Step 2: access the emoji section
Now that the keyboard is set up, you’re ready to select and send emojis to anyone. Open any app you can type, like Messages, then tap on the desired location to bring up the keyboard. If you set the default kana, romaji or chinese keyboard it should appear right away.
If it doesn’t open right away, press and hold the globe icon in the bottom left corner, then swipe up and select Japanese or Chinese keyboard. You can also click on the globe until you reach the desired keyboard.
Option 1: Kana Keyboard
For Kana, press the “^_^”key to access the secret emoji keyboard, then press the drop-down button (down arrow) at the top to expand the full list of emoji.
Option 2: Romaji Keyboard
For Romaji, press “123”, then press the “^_^”key, and then press the drop-down button (down arrow) at the top to expand the full list of emoticons.
Option 3: Chinese Keyboards
Not all Chinese keyboards work the same way. The first group below works like Kana’s keyboard, where you press the “^_^”key to access the secret emoji keyboard, then press the drop-down button (down arrow) at the top to expand the full list of emojis.
- Chinese Simplified – Pinyin – 10 keys
- Chinese (simplified) – Stroke
- Chinese Traditional – Pinyin – 10 Keys
- Chinese, Traditional – Stroke
Chinese, traditional – pinyin keyboard (10 keys).
The second group is similar to the romaji keyboard but with an extra step. Press “123”, then the “#+-“key, then the “^_^”key, and then press the drop-down button (down arrow) at the top to expand the full list of emoticons.
- Chinese Simplified – Handwriting
- Chinese Simplified – Pinyin (QWERTY or AZERTY)
- Simplified Chinese – Shuangpin (Sogou, Pinyin Jiajia, Weiruan, Xiaohe or Changyong)
- Chinese Simplified – Wubi (Wubi 86, Wubi 98 or Wubi New-Century)
- Chinese Traditional (Cangjie) (QWERTY or Standard)
- Chinese Traditional – Handwriting
- Chinese Traditional – Pinyin (QWERTY or AZERTY)
- Chinese, traditional – shuangpin
- Chinese Traditional – Sucheng (QWERTY or Standard)
- Chinese Traditional (Zhuyin) (Dynamic or Standard)
Chinese Simplified – Wubi keyboard (Wubi 86).
Step 3: Add emoji like never before
If you don’t reveal the full list of emoji, you can swipe left on the line to see more. However, there are too many emoticons, so it’s easier to click the down arrow to expand the list and view it vertically.
When you find an emoji you like, click on it. The emoji keyboard will disappear and the emoji itself will be loaded where you type. You can remove any part of the emoji as it only consists of individual Unicode characters.
Kana (left) and romaji (right) keyboards.
These keyboards do not list all emojis but only a decent selection of oriental style emoji called “kaomoji”, western and some anime style emoji. The characters in each emoji, some of which are syllabograms and glyphs, come from many different character sets such as hiragana, katakana, kanji, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets, and other types of characters.
The kana, romaji, and chinese keyboards may have the same static emoji, but there are also different ones, so having multiple keyboards can be a good idea if you want more variety.