How to Access and Use Emoji on Windows Operating System
We use emojis on a regular basis on smartphones every day. For those who don’t know much about emojis, they are the tiny characters that appear on your smartphone page, Facebook page or other social media pages which has a range of different expressions to express yourselves.
You can make use of these emojis to express your emotions without writing a lengthy sentence to let others know what you’re thinking at the moment. Fortunately these little characters are not just limited to your smartphones but they can be used on Windows and tablets too!!
No chat conversation is complete without the colorful and interesting Emojis or the Emoticons. While almost every platform and device has their own set of funny and exciting emojis, Windows users are still using the keyboard keys Colon ‘:’ and simple bracket ‘)’ to make emoticons like :), :(, :P and a few more.
After a great run on Android and iPhone these emojis were added by Microsoft on Windows platforms starting from Windows 7 and till now Windows 10 has the best emoji support ever with a dedicated emoji keyboard with latest standards. Now let’s learn how to use Windows emoji:
Using Emojis in Windows 10
Most of the Windows 10 users are unaware of the fact that they can actually use the funny emoticons like the middle finger, a receptionist, a dancing girl, a fairy, a Santa Claus, an angel and so on. Yes, now when almost every Windows PC is running the latest Windows 10 operating system, you can spruce up your chat conversations, your status updates on social networking website, your emails or any other documents with these tiny comical characters.
Using emojis on windows 10 is quite like using it on Windows 8 and 8.1. You have to use the on-screen keyboard to use these emojis. When we say on-screen keyboard, we are not really talking about the regular keyboard desktop app, we are talking about the touch keyboard, there is a difference.
Step 1: Enable the touch keyboard by going to your taskbar
- Right click on your taskbar
- Select/Click on the show Touch Keyboard button.
This will open the touch keyboard and will also add a small keyboard icon on your taskbar. So you can click this small keyboard icon anytime you need to add the emojis in your Word document or anywhere else.
Step 2: Now when the keyboard is open
- Click on the smiley button next to space bar and the alphabetical keys will convert into emojis keyboard.
Step 3: These emojis has been categorized into various categories like emoticons, symbols, love, eatables and more.
- Click on the small arrow in the most left pane to get more emojis of a selected category. Switch between the emoji categories using the category buttons at the bottom.
You can also change the color tone of the emojis from this keyboard. Click on the small color square just beside Smiley button and select the skin tone from 6 different options.
Please note that the emojis appear differently across programs. For example, they came up colorful in Facebook status update but black-and-white in MS Word and Notepad. We don’t know if there is some way out to get these colorful emojis as it is.
How to Use Emojis on Windows 8/8.1
An emoji keyboard was introduced by Microsoft in Windows 8 as well as Windows 8.1.Google Chrome doesn’t support these emojis however it can be used after installing an add-on. Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer supports these emojis already so you won’t need to install any add-on
Step 1: In Desktop Mode
- Right-click on the taskbar
- Choose “Touch Keyboard” inside the Toolbars section
Step 2: A new icon appears in your system tray in the bottom-right, which looks like a keyboard, just click on it
Step 3: The on-screen keyboard appears.
- Click on the emoji smiley-face icon
Step 4: The emoji keyboard replaces the alphabetical keyboard
- Click any emoji to insert into the current text field
How to use Emoji in Windows 7
Windows has natively supported emoji since Windows 7. To type emoji on windows 7, you have to enable the touch keyboard (if it's not already enabled). Here's how:
- From your desktop, right-click on the Taskbar
- In "Toolbars" select the "Touch Keyboard" option to enable the Touch Keyboard button
- Click the new "Touch Keyboard" icon that is now in your system tray
- From the on-screen keyboard, click the smiley face button next to the spacebar
Congratulations - you now have access to the emoji keyboard, which you can use to enter any emoji into your posts on Twitter, Facebook, or any other app.