Change Emoticons To Emoji in iOS?

By Teresa, 5 January, 2025

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

So I use Braille screen input on my phone and find using emoji to be very clunky. Is there a setting in iOS that will turn emoticons, (i.e. colon, right-parentheses for smile) into emoji? This seems to happen seamlessly on the Mac, at least in the native messages app. Thanks.

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Comments

By Dave Nason on Tuesday, January 7, 2025 - 22:46

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Hi. I don’t believe there is.
However there is another way, by using text replacements. Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement. Here you can set up shortcuts that expand out into other text. A lot of people use it for example to type a short word and have that turn into a sentence which they type frequently, or something like their address.
Another way to use it though is to have a couple of letters or characters turn into an emoji. For example I have it set up so that if I type “etu“, it turns into 👍🏻
You could use the colon and bracket for ☺️ or like me, use “esf“. It’s up to you.
HTH,
Dave

By Teresa on Tuesday, January 7, 2025 - 22:46

I had forgotten about this option; will try it.