Google now offers its very own keyboard for iOS, and it’s awesome. It’s packed full of useful features like glide typing and built-in search, and it has a clean and simple design that’s a pleasure to type on. It’s probably the best third-party keyboard on iPhone.
But there are 10 things you should know about Gboard before you get set up.
Trying to express your empathy for a friend’s grief, or your outrage at a recent political post, has been a Facebook conundrum since day one. No one wants to Like things they don’t actually, well, like. It’s just too limiting.
That’s why Mark Zuckerberg and Co. just rolled out Facebook’s new Reactions, five new emotional icons that we all get to use in place of the familiar thumbs-up Like button (which is still there, thank goodness).
The new Facebook Reactions system has rolled out to the web and your iOS devices today (via the Facebook app). Here’s how to respond to Facebook posts with a bit more color.
iOS 10 may come with a big batch of new emoji, including pictograms for things like shrimp, croissant, owl, wrestlers, a bunch of hand gestures, a shrug emoticon and more.
The Unicode Consortium has recently accepted the updated Unicode 9 emoji set that contains as many as 74 new emoji that companies like Apple and Google will be able to add to their software keyboards. The consortium will make a final determination on which emojis to add later this year, with the release of Unicode 9.0 set for June 2016. That’s pretty good timing for Apple which is expected to unveil iOS 10 at WWDC in June, with a public launch scheduled for the fall.
Here’s the full list of new emoji:
In Apple’s Messages app, you can easily add emojis with a quick click on the little happy face icon in the iMessage text field. If you use a chat app like Slack, you can do the same.
But what if you want to add an emoji to an email, a letter, or any other text field? Turns out there’s an often-overlooked menu item (with a corresponding keyboard shortcut) that lets you do just that.
Check it out.
In addition to rounding up the best stories of the year, we’re also showcasing the weirdest of 2015, and we can’t do that without including the sickest burns people laid down over the past 12 months.
It’s always strange when companies and CEOs snip and snap at each other like annoyed children. We should expect them to be above that sort of behavior, but guess what? They totally aren’t.
Here are some of the most blistering insults of the year.
Ever been in texting conversation and found yourself completely unable to express yourself because there’s just not an emoji of Kim Kardashian’s breasts?
It’s unfortunate that society has come to this point, but if you answered ‘yes’ to the question above, there’s finally an app for that. Kim Kardashian now has an official emoji app — called Kimoji (get it?) — that brings more than 250 emoji and sticker designs to help you convey the deepest thoughts of your soul.
Oxford Dictionaries has named its pick for Word of the Year — and it’s less a pick than a pic. That’s right: out of all the newly popular “words” to capture the “ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015,” the winning choice is 😂, a.k.a. the “Face with Tears of Joy” emoji. However, while some emojis dominate online conversations, others are barely ever used. If you’ve ever wondered what is the most unused emoji, there’s data that reveals which ones are at the bottom of the popularity list.
Sign of the changing times, or a desperate attempt for Oxford Dictionaries to stay relevant? You decide.
Twitter decided to take a step toward Facebook today by changing its star icon for favorites into a heart icon and calling them Likes.
The changes have not gone over well, with many Twitter fans questioning the decision while others are just down right angry that Twitter took away the best way to say, ‘I saw your tweet, but don’t want to reply to it.’
Luckily, there is a way to change the hearts back to stars when using the social network through a browser. You can even change the hearts to a beer, poop, unicorn, or any other emoji and it doesn’t require much work.
Here’s how to strike back against Twitter’s new hearts icon:
There’s now a faster way to flip the middle finger or display a steaming pile of poop – along with your other favorite emoji.
EmojiWorks has introduced what is probably the first portable keyboard with built-in emoji shortcuts. Each letter key displays two or three different emoji, which can be inserted into a message by pressing a dedicated emoji key.
You’re probably excited about all of the fun new emoji characters that you just got in iOS 9.1, but one of the new additions won’t show up on any of your keyboards.
The “Left Speech Bubble” emoji isn’t part of the official canon yet, but Apple went ahead and added it, anyway. Here’s what it looks like and how to add it to your pictorial lexicon.
Apple’s new “Eye in Speech Bubble” emoji has mystified us ever since it was first discovered last month, but now that iOS 9.1 is out to the public, we finally know the full story (and meaning) behind the odd new pictogram.
Remember in grade school when you learned what the middle finger meant? Twitter was kind of like that Thursday morning as giggly and astonished people reported their discovery of a middle-finger emoji in their iOS update.
This is not new news. We knew the finger would fly when the iOS update was announced earlier. Maybe it got lost in the excitement of finally getting a taco emoji. Who knows. But the tweets about the bird were refreshing 20 and 30 at a time every few seconds this morning.
To most taking to social media, the middle finger feels naughty and delicious.
This week’s update to iOS 9.1 did more than just squash some bugs and tweak the Shift key. It also added a ton of new emojis to your built-in keyboard. If you want to put a number on it, iOS 9.1 adds 184 new, tiny pictures to spice up your text messages.
It may be hard to keep track of which ones are new, so we gathered up the newcomers for your convenience — along with where to find them.
The first big update for OS X El Capitan has been released to the public today after months of beta testing of its new features and improvements.
OS X 10.11.1 brings more than 150 new emoji characters to the Mac, along with improved compatibility with Microsoft Office 2016, better VoiceOver reliability and numerous other bug fixes. The update can be now loaded through the Mac App Store or via the Software Update option in the Apple menu.
Here’s a full list of the improvements:
A ton of new emoji land on iOS devices today with the public launch of iOS 9.1.
Apple released iOS 9.1 this morning to users after five beta builds of the first big iOS 9 update were tested by developers. Among the new features: dozens of new emoji for everything from tacos, burritos, unicorns — and even a middle finger.
iOS users currently running iOS 9.0.2 can grab the new software via an over-the-air update or download it directly from iTunes.
Here’s everything that’s new in the update:
A mysterious new emoji has been added by Apple to iOS 9.1 and OS X El Capitan, but unlike the other emoji supported by Apple, this weird new pictogram wasn’t created by the Unicode Authority, and no one knows why it exists.
Apple plans to give emoji the middle finger when iOS 9.1 drops later this year, but it looks like the iPhone-maker has developed its own emoji called “eye in speech bubble,” and no one has any idea what it means.
Check it out:
Some iPhone and iPad users upgrading to iOS 9 today have been looking forward to expressing their love of tacos, burritos, and unicorns — and their disdain for everything else — using the much-touted new emojis, which include the coveted and versatile “middle finger” icon.
But unfortunately for those folks, we’re going to have to wait a little longer to start flipping things the bird.
While the just-released iOS 9.1. beta is light on major features, it does contain some big additions for the iPhone’s emoji keyboard.
Tons of new emoji were added in iOS 9.1 as part of the system’s update to Unicode 8.0 standards, which includes support for burrito, taco and unicorn pictograms. There’s also a stop hand, upside-down smiley face, a turkey, prayer beads, and much more.
Here’s a look at all the new emoji:
Emoji have quickly become the language of choice for digital natives, but when it comes to the tiny pictograms, not all emoji are used equally. To find out which areas of the United States use emoji differently, SwiftKey analyzed over 1 billion emoji used on its keyboard app between June 2014 and 2015, and came away with some interesting take aways — like the elephant emoji being most popular in Alabama, while the volcano emoji is blowing up in Maine.
Check out the map to see which is your state’s favorite emoji:
Disappearing photo and video sharing app, Snapchat, has just updated to include a couple of great new features, including a data-reducing Travel Mode, an emoji button called Sticker Picker, and a way to see who’s viewing your posts, called Stories, in the app itself.
Who would’ve thought emojis could prove so controversial?
Following on from the yellow skin color accusations and Russian LGBT emojis attempted banning, the nonprofit group New Yorkers Against Gun Violence (NYAGV) has launched a new hashtag entitled #DisarmTheiPhone — calling for Apple to “remove the gun emoji [from iOS] and take a stand for stricter gun accessibility in America.”
Check out a video for the campaign below:
When iOS 8.3 introduced new gay-friendly emojis, one person no doubt responding with a :( sad face was Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin’s not taking it lying down, however. According to Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor, the President has requested a full pro-Kremlin group investigation and crackdown on same sex emojis, concerned that they violate the country’s ban on “gay propaganda.”
Because if there’s one thing proven to make you trade girlfriends for boyfriends, it’s someone sending you a picture of two male smiley faces holding hands.
We’ve already got one “must see” tech-themed movie coming up this year with the Aaron Sorkin-penned Steve Jobs biopic, but Hollywood’s not done when it come to giving technology the big screen treatment.
In a deal reported to be worth close to seven-figures, Sony Pictures Animation has reportedly beaten out two other major studios to win the rights to a movie based on none other than emojis.
How big a fan of Hellboy are you?
If you answered, “Such a big fan that I wish ‘Hellboy’ were a language I could speak all the time — if only someone would make a keyboard to that effect,” you’re in luck because custom keyboard designer Swype has teamed up with publisher Dark Horse Comics to bring both Red and samurai rabbit Usagi Yojimbo to your iMessages.
Slack is ingraining emojis even deeper into your work environment whether you like it or not. Users were already able to send emojis casually while chatting, but now anyone can specifically react to messages in Slack with emojis. It’s pretty easy to get creative with this, and it’s sure to spice up the chat with your co-workers.