How to View and Type Emojis on a Computer

This article explains various ways to view and type emojis on a computer.

Use Emojis on Messages for Web

If you have an Android phone, enable Messages for Web to text from your computer. In addition to regular text messages, the web interface contains an emoji gallery you can use to send emojis from your computer to any phone.

Messages for Web also displays emojis sent to you and replaces the blank boxes with the corresponding emoji.

Look for an Emoji Icon

Many web-based messengers and desktop-based texting platforms support emojis. X is one example. In the past, inserting an emoji in a tweet required a service such as iEmoji. X now contains an emoji gallery. To insert an emoji in a tweet, select the face icon in the tweet to open the emoji gallery.

Facebook and Messenger have emoji galleries that make sending emojis over Facebook super easy. You don't have to use these emoji galleries. You can use a third-party service to copy an emoji and paste it into a Facebook post or a Messenger message.

Other online texting platforms such as WhatsApp Web and Skype for Web have emojis support, too, so you can send emojis from your computer and view emojis sent to you.

Your email provider may include emoji support. For example, to access the emoji gallery in Gmail, compose a new message, then select the face icon from the bottom toolbar.

Install an Emoji Extension in Your Web Browser

If a website or messaging service doesn't support emojis, you'll see a hollow box instead of the emoji on a web page, and you won't find an emoji gallery in the messaging service.

To get emojis on your computer, use a web browser extension. Some extensions display emojis as they appear on mobile devices and others provide a gallery of emojis.

Chromoji for Google Chrome detects any hollow boxes on web pages and replaces these boxes with the emoji icon. Chromoji also comes with a toolbar icon you can use to type emoji characters. Emojify is a similar extension.

In the Firefox browser, use Emoji Keyboard to paste emojis into text boxes. It works with emails, messages, and other types of text boxes. To replace the Unicode emojis with their normal images in Firefox, install Emoji Cheatsheet.

In Safari and most apps on a Mac, go to Edit > Emoji & Symbols to use emoji in social networking sites and your Mac emails, folders, contacts, calendar, and more.