You've seen them before. The cars and bicycles. The clinking beers. That bizarre, smiling pile of poo. You want to reply back with a semi-nonsensical emoji message of your own but... how the heck do you get the emoji keyboard on your mobile device in the first place?
If you're on iOS, the keyboard can be a little tricky to find. You'll want to go to Settings > General, then scroll down and tap on Keyboard. Below a handful of toggle settings like Auto-Capitalization is the Keyboards setting. Tap that, then tap "Add New Keyboard." There, sandwiched between non-English language keyboards is the Emoji keyboard. Select it. Now you should have two keyboards installed. When you go to type out a message, email, or social media status update, now a grid-laden globe icon is in the lower left of your iOS keyboard. You can tap it to access a vast trove of emoji, everything from Christmas trees, to baby chicks, to winking smileys.
For those Android users lucky enough to own a new KitKat-running device, all you have to do is press and hold the enter or search key to get at its new built-in emoji keyboard. In some apps, it'll add an emoji smiley icon in the lower right. If you've got an older Android device, you can download the Android KitKat keyboard APK to get KitKat's keyboard.
To do that, which (warning!) will modify your Android experience with third party software and could potentially muck up your handset, follow these steps:
- Go to Settings, Security, and check "Unknown Sources" to give yourself the ability to install software from sources other than Google Play
- Download the Android 4.4 keyboard APK either directly on your device, or on your computer, then transfer it later. Android Police has three mirrors for the download at the link.
- On your device, tap the finished download and follow onscreen installer prompts. You can install from Google Drive or Dropbox if you're getting prompts to use unrelated programs during this process
- After installation, follow Google's setup tutorial.
If you own an older Android device and don't want to go through the above installation, you're only options are to stick with an app like Whatsapp that supports its own emoji keyboard, or to install a third-party emoji keyboard. Results vary by phone model.
