Emoticons on the iPhone

By Jesse Tregarthen, 11 November, 2013

Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Hello. I am wondering If the iPhone has emoticons on it. I thought it did but I cannot find it. I am using IOS 6 if that makes a difference. Thanks, Jesse

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Comments

By Siobhan on Monday, November 11, 2013 - 13:01

Hi. Ok you're at a small disadvantage, coffee isn't in my system and being on IOS 7 I am not sure some of the steps might be just a little bit different, but i'll do my best. first go into settings, then general and I think international and keyboard. It wil tell you have one keyboard, your default american, or UK or whatever one you use. Then you tap the edit button, and then add. Go down the list of new ones until you here emogee or something like that. go ahead and add it and close the settings. Once done, you will be able to write a message, and then down near your left shift key is the next keyboard button. Tap this to enable it and write what you want, then tap it again to go back to the native touch screen keyboard. I hope that helps.

Siobhan, thanks for posting what you did. I've been wondering how to get to this keyboard for months and just never asked!

By Joey G on Monday, November 11, 2013 - 19:10

Yes, it does. In fact, I can refer you to a podcast, done by yours truly about how to use them. Enjoy. This was done using Ios6 if I remember correctly. http://www.applevis.com/podcast/episodes/enabling-and-using-emoticons-keyboard-your-ios-device

By Serena on Monday, November 11, 2013 - 19:29

hi. they are called emoji, and they are a japanese form of smilies or image wrighting. and yes, the same ways to enable / use them in iOS 6 apply to 7. hasn't changed really. just be aware though, that unless you are sending them to people who have support for them in, they won't see them. for example. if you were to send them on twitter or facebook, those who have phones, most especially iPhones and other iOS devices will see them, some other mobiles will see them, and i think mac's will see them, but don't quote me on it. but people on windows will only see a blank square in it's place, unless they get support for them downloaded as a pack i would imagine.

By Joey G on Monday, November 11, 2013 - 20:10

I was actually thinking of doing another podcast to update some information about this issue. When I did the origional around a year ago, I did not realize they couldn't be sent to users who did not have an apple device. Also, I thought they could be written by hand, but of course, I was mistaken on that part as well. *grins* The real fun thing to do with the emogy stuff is to write little storys using them, inserting them where normal things and characters would go. Then again, I'm easily amused.

By Siobhan on Monday, November 11, 2013 - 20:14

Hi Joe. First off, as one commenter, if that's a word, said, people that have support for them do see them. Someone I text sees just a rectangle when I send a symbol but a friend with the imogee enabled or evenwith it off, still sees it. I think it's just a matter of maybe activating them somehow? And you can write some of them. Here they are along with the punctuation spaced you :) : ) ;) ; ) :( : ( :P : p or P doesn't matter i don't think. For those wo don't know whatwhat I wrote they are as follows smiley wink, frown tongue sticking out. I forget there's another but those are the only only ones I know.

hi, not quite. you are thinking kinda similar, but what you actually printed up, are normal chars. the emoji, are nothing like this. they are actual images. so much better then some strange bit of text you have to look at sideways or at and angle to see the picture. that is why you can't just see them, without support. they have to actually be on your system, for you to be able to see them, without it being represented by a little blank box. and yes, as long as they have support for them, they can see them. apple are just known for putting the support right in as an actual keyboard for entry, as well as displaying.

By Seanoevil on Monday, November 11, 2013 - 23:52

One thing that I have noticed is that VO on Mavericks does not like text with Emoji. It seems to read all text up until the point the Emoji were inserted then, either stop reading or descend into a loop. I have noticed this behaviour in Text Edit, Safari, iMessage, and a number of Twitter clients.

you might want to contact apple on the access email address, and let them know everything you can about that, so that it can be solved. i have not got a mac, although i have mavericks running as a vm, but as a result, i can't use such things as iMessage. so hadn't noticed that one.

By Piotr Machacz on Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - 10:26

That Mac issue you're describing only seems to happen if you use Vocalizer voices. Unlike on the iPhone Emoji reading is baked into the Macintalk synthesiser (That is, all the original apple voices like Alex or Fred). For what ever reason, Vocalizer breaks completely if it encounters emoji but thankfully that issue is not present with other voices. A few things to note about Emoji (all thanks to the wikipedia article): They have indeed ben came up with in Japan and were incorporated by the carriers there. To make things even more interesting all 3 carriers had slightly different Emoji variants, and they ended up spreading outside of Japan and the more popular characters were added to the Unicode character table. They are officially supported by iOS, OS X starting with Lion, all of the google services, Windows Phone 7, and I would imagine Windows 8 as well, not sure about 7. I also heard that Facebook can translate some emoji even on unsupported browsers or devices but don't quote me on that. I sent a few to sighted people and they didn't tell ask me what the heck was I sending, so I'd imagine it's true. :D

Hi. subject line says it, I can get to them by enabling the emogee on the phone. but I don't know how to write any of those. :) Is there a way to do it on the Mac, I like using them ;)