Emoji
How to Copy and Paste Emojis on Any Device
· 4 min read
The quickest way to add an emoji is your device's own emoji keyboard: press Windows + . on Windows, Control + Command + Space (or the 🌐 Globe key + E) on a Mac, and tap the smiley key on a phone. When you need an emoji you can't find there, search for it by name in the Emoji Search, click it to copy, and paste it anywhere with Ctrl+V or Cmd+V.
Built-in emoji keyboards
Every major system ships an emoji picker. They differ mostly in the shortcut:
| Device | How to open the emoji picker |
|---|---|
| Windows 10 and 11 | Windows key + . (period) or Windows key + ; (semicolon) |
| macOS | Control + Command + Space, or press the 🌐 Globe / Fn key on newer keyboards |
| ChromeOS | Search key + Shift + Space, or right-click a text field and choose Emoji |
| Linux (GNOME) | Ctrl + . in many apps, or the system emoji picker if your desktop has one |
| iPhone and iPad | Tap the 😀 or 🌐 key on the keyboard |
| Android (Gboard) | Tap the 😊 key, or long-press the comma key on some layouts |
All of them let you type a word to filter: on Windows, open the picker and start typing "heart"; on a Mac, the search box already has focus. Picked emojis are inserted where the cursor is, just like letters.
Searching by name or meaning
System pickers know each emoji's official name and a handful of keywords. Emojar's Emoji Search covers all 3,789 emojis in Unicode 16.0 and matches names, keywords and the emoji character itself, so "party", "celebrate" and 🎉 all find the same family of results. Each result has its own page with the meaning, the Unicode codepoints, the version that introduced it and related emojis.
Copying is a single click: the emoji goes to your clipboard as text, not as an image. That matters — pasted text emojis scale with the font, can be searched and are read aloud by screen readers.
If you prefer to browse, the emoji categories follow the ten groups Unicode uses, from Smileys & Emotion to Flags, and the A–Z list shows every emoji sorted by its name.
Shortcodes in Slack, GitHub and Discord
Chat and developer tools often accept shortcodes: a name between colons that turns into an emoji, such as :fire: for 🔥 or :thumbs_up: for 👍. Type a colon and a few letters in Slack, Discord, GitHub or Teams and a suggestion list appears.
Shortcode names aren't standardised. GitHub uses :+1: for 👍 as well as :thumbsup:, and Slack lets workspaces add their own. When a shortcode doesn't work, search for the emoji instead and paste the character itself — that always works, because it is plain Unicode text.
Why an emoji looks different on another phone
An emoji is a character, like the letter A. Its code is standardised by Unicode, but each company draws its own picture. The "grinning face" is the same character on an iPhone, a Samsung phone and a Windows PC; it is just drawn by Apple, Samsung or Microsoft. Usually the meaning survives, but details such as the expression of 😬 or the colour of 🥲's tear can change the tone.
Some emojis are built from several characters joined with an invisible zero-width joiner (ZWJ). 👩💻 is "woman" + ZWJ + "laptop", and 1,468 of the emojis in Unicode 16.0 are such sequences. A device that knows the sequence shows one picture; an older one shows the parts side by side, such as 👩💻.
Why some emojis show as an empty box
A square, a question mark or "tofu" (□) means the device has no picture for that character yet. New emojis arrive in yearly Unicode releases — for example the eight emojis of Unicode 16.0 — and phones get them with system updates. Until then, the receiver sees a box even though you sent the right character.
You can't fix this on the receiving side except by updating the system. If the message must look right everywhere, choose an emoji from an older Unicode version; every emoji page on Emojar shows the version it was added in.
Skin tones and gender variants
Most people and hand emojis come in five skin tones, from light to dark, built by adding a skin-tone modifier to the base emoji. That is why the People & Body group is by far the largest: of the 2,261 emojis in it, 1,880 are skin-tone variants. On phones, long-press an emoji to choose a tone; on Windows and Mac the picker has a tone selector. Gendered versions such as 🧑🍳, 👨🍳 and 👩🍳 are separate ZWJ sequences, so you pick them like any other emoji.
Using emojis outside messages
Because emojis are text, you can paste them into file names, spreadsheet cells, calendar titles and website copy. A few tips:
- Web pages: emojis in titles and headings are fine, but don't replace words with them — screen readers announce the emoji's full name.
- Images: to put an emoji in a design or slide, download it as a picture with Emoji to PNG instead of taking a screenshot.
- Combinations: for a playful mash-up of two emojis, try Emoji Kitchen.
- Codes: to see an emoji's codepoints and HTML entity, paste it into the Emoji Inspector.
Quick checklist
- Use the system shortcut for everyday emojis.
- Search by meaning on Emoji Search when you don't know the name.
- Paste the character itself when a shortcode doesn't work.
- Check the Unicode version if the receiver might have an older phone.
- For anything printed or designed, download a PNG rather than a screenshot.