Emoji are a common way of expressing oneself in the modern age. But, they don’t need to be restricted to phones alone. This article is going to cover what emojis are, how you can use them, and whether or not it’s even possible to use them through the use of a standard desktop keyboard.
It’s far easier than you might think, so don’t worry if you aren’t the most technology savvy person. This guide will be quick and easy for anyone, of any ability or background, to follow. Here we go.
Emoji on a desktop keyboard, haha, get it?
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Table of Contents
What are emojis?
Emojis are cool little images that we can use to express ourselves. Sometimes they are simple, a little tree to represent a tree, or a bird for a bird, etc. You get the picture. Faces portraying different emotions are probably the most common form of emoji.
Every OS tends to have its own set of emojis, apple emojis are easy enough to find once you have the emoji keyboard enabled. Android phones have their emoji library, though many people find that it’s not quite as good and in some cases, the emotion-based emojis look downright disturbing.
Emojis are not new, anyone familiar with Skype has probably been using their complex emojis for over a decade now. As you can probably guess, Skype emojis came before phone emojis for most of us. This is our first indicator that emojis can be used on the computer.
Other online message processors such as Zoom or Discord also gives you the ability to use emojis with inbuilt punctuation converters. Punctuation converters are one way to add emojis from our computer, but that’s not quite what we are looking for here.
Emojis have been around since cellphones gave the ability to use text messages. Punctuation combinations created emojis of sorts, 🙂 or 🙁 are very common examples that people still tend to use today. Symbols representing words or feelings are not uncommon, just look at Egyptian Hieroglyphs.
How to convert my keyboard to be emoji friendly?
So, we have established that the framework is already in place for computers to process emojis. Sometimes it needs to be done through a converter like discord has, which is also attached to a library that you can select certain emojis from.
But what if we don’t want to have to use Skype or Discord to be able to use emojis? What if we want to add emojis to our email? Or in the forums of a website? What if I wanted to add an emoji to this article right now? Could I do it? ? (Yes) Luckily, it isn’t even particularly difficult to do so. If you follow these steps you’ll be using emojis in no time at all.
It’s important to start by clarifying that this guide was designed to work with windows 10. Earlier versions of windows may work too, but not all. This guide is similar in theory to how you would do so on IOS or Linux but not quite 100% the same. So, here we go.
What is the Emojiworks Keyboard?
This is a pretty cool looking keyboard, but I couldn’t figure out where to purchase it. It was pretty expensive from what I could find out, over $100. Instead of purchasing a special keyboard, I’m going to teach you how to make your own emoji keyboard. Here is a video of what the Emojiworks keyboard looks like though, incase you’re curious!
Program keys to have an emoji function
First, you are going to need to boot up your computer. You should start by running a virus scan and updating the computer to the latest operating system. It’s important to do both of these steps first because you remove the chance of any unknown errors from occurring. You can update your PC by typing updates in the taskbar search section. It will require a restart of your computer before it takes effect. Once this is done, we can get started.
Next, you will want to right-click somewhere on the taskbar. It doesn’t matter where so long as it is a blank section. Otherwise, when you right-click you will be opening up the wrong menu. We want the menu option that contains the word toolbars. Once you locate toolbars you can go ahead and give that a quick left click, which will bring us to the next menu.
This menu should be very simple to navigate. First, you will want to click the touch keyboard. Depending on your OS it might ask you for some confirmations, or ask you to choose whereabouts you want the touch keyboard logo to sit on your taskbar. Before you click accept, make sure you familiarise yourself with the touch keyboard logo because you’ll be needing to use it later.
The touch keyboard logo usually sits over on the right-hand side of the taskbar. Once you click it, you will have access to a wide array of different keyboard settings. You are looking for a smiley face symbol. Once you click it you will be able to correlate an emoji to each key. Or to a section of text.
Labeling your keys
If you set keys to have emoji functionality, you may want a way to remember them. I’ve seen some users put stickers on their keyboard keycaps to help them remember. Check out this video where he bought many keyboards to be able to use every emoji on his computer.
Get some stickers for your keyboard at Amazon
Copy and paste from website
You can also use various websites such as https://www.iemoji.com/keyboard to copy and paste an emoji into your email or web post. This is a little more tedious overall but far easier in the short term. Sometimes the copied emoji won’t show up correctly in your text but will compile correctly when you click send/post etc.
Conclusion
So, now you know how to get as many emojis as you could need when using windows 10. If you feel like leaving emojis on your keyboard permanently, it’s a good idea to try and remember which key corresponds to which emoji.
This can be a little tricky, so what you might want to do is draw a little emoji on your keycap. If you are a confident artist, you could paint your keycaps a new color, and paint a letter as well as a small representation of the emoji. A smiley face, a little tree, etc. You can also buy some keycaps with emojis already on them, but that’s not quite as fun.
It truly isn’t that difficult to use these emojis. They are fun, great for expressing emotions, and if you want to mess with someone they put a real emphasis on your sarcasm that can be thoroughly entertaining.
If you are having trouble, make sure that your computer is up to date. Being behind on your OS updates can cause the emoji keyboard to stop working as intended, or working at all. Good luck with your new emojis, have fun!