How to Use Emojis on Windows

If you ever wondered how to use emojis on Windows, or since when the emojis are around and what is their significance, you will find all your answers here. Because Windows 10 offers a great range of emojis that help you express your feelings and reactions in fewer words, they have recently gained a decent level of popularity, mostly amongst youngsters and millennials.

With that said, in the following sections, you will learn how to use emojis on Windows 10 using both keyboard shortcuts and touch keyboard, how to get emojis on Windows 10 to make your text or conversation look more versatile, and what new has been added to the latest operating system released by Microsoft, i.e., Windows 11.

Part 1: The History of Emojis in Windows

Although emojis are present in some form or the other since the mid-‘90s, they were not quite popular back then. With the evolution of smartphones, these iconic characters got attention from the then-teenagers. Seeing this, in 2012, Microsoft introduced the first-ever set of black-and-white emojis with the release of Windows 8, and after some time, the company also added the same to Windows 7 that was rolled out along with the updates for the OS.

With the release of Windows 10 in 2015, a wide range of full-fledged colored emojis was introduced and received a large number of positive reactions from the users. As of today, emojis have become an integral part of everyone’s day-to-day text conversation, be it on Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook, or any other such platform.

Part 2: How to Use Emojis with Keyboard Shortcuts

A keyboard shortcut is a combination of two or more keys that are pressed simultaneously to trigger a pre-assigned event or action. A good example of a keyboard shortcut is ‘Ctrl + S’ which, when pressed, saves the document you’re working on.

While learning the process of how to use emoji in Windows 10, it is equally imperative to memorize the shortcut keys to insert those icons without taking your hands off the keyboard. This not only saves your time, but it also prevents you from going through the lengthy process of opening the emojis keyboard, navigating through all the available icons to choose the one you’re looking for, and then clicking it to insert in the document or conversation.

Nevertheless, it would be a good idea to learn how to launch the emojis keyboard, and the process is simple. All you need to do is:

Once the keyboard is open, you can click any of the available emojis to insert it in your conversion or text content.

As for the shortcuts, depending on the type of expression you want to convey, there could be thousands of them. Some of the commonly used emojis and their universal shortcut keys for both Windows 10 and Windows 11 include:

: (colon) + ) (right brace) will create a smiley face

: (colon) + ( (left brace) will create a sad face

: (colon) + ; (semicolon) will create a wink face

…and so on. You can conduct a quick online search to get the entire list of keyboard shortcuts and the emojis that they will create. For your convenience, a link from the Microsoft official website is given below:

Link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/emoticon-keyboard-shortcuts-5dbe678c-cef7-4a63-aa62-f07c2f38b267

Part 3: How to Use Emojis on Windows PC with Touch Keyboard

If you have Microsoft Surface or any other device that has Windows 10 or Windows 11 installed on it, and can accept inputs via touch keyboard, you can enable the feature in the operating system, and then use the touch keyboard to add emojis to your conversion or content. You can follow the instructions given below to enable touch keyboard, and then learn how to use emojis on Windows 11 or Windows 10 via touch:

Part 4: What’s New in Emojis in Windows 11

In addition to learning how to use emojis on Windows 10, it is also important to know what’s new with them or the emojis panel in Windows 11, the latest operating system released by Microsoft this year, i.e., 2021.

In Windows 11, although you can launch the emojis keyboard using the same shortcuts, i.e., ‘Windows + .’ or ‘Windows + ;’ keys as mentioned earlier, the emojis keyboard itself has four sections, namely:

In addition to this, the 2D Clippy emoji has also been introduced with Windows 11, and can be located by launching the emojis keyboard, and typing ‘Clippy’.

Part 5: How to Get More Emojis in Windows 11

If the built-in emoji library doesn’t contain your favorite expressions, you can always get several more by following the instructions given below:

Conclusion

While the emojis were introduced to Windows as late as 2012, Windows 11 has a wide range of these virtual objects or faces for various occasions and to convey different expressions respectively. Furthermore, Windows 11 also gives you access to Tenor’s GIFs, and ASCII characters with particular combinations to represent the emojis, as it was done back in the days of button-operated cellphones.

Also, if the built-in emoji keyboard doesn’t have your favorite expressions and smileys, you can always generate your custom ones by going to http://www.iemoji.com/, and using the options that the website offers. All in all, it’s easy to learn how to use emojis on Windows as long as you have access to the correct tutorial that explains the process in an easy manner.