Macs can type emojis too

Updated June 8th, 2019.

iPhone users know all about emojis, those little pictures that you can send in a “text” message. Turns out the Mac can type emojis too. You may have to experiment a bit to find out which ones get to the recipient properly but that’s OK.

In Yosemite and newer, find emojis under the Edit menu in “Emojis & Symbols.” (Older versions of the Mac OS will call it “Special Characters…”) That leads to a nice palette with emojis galore. So, if you want to type something like this:

… you just go to the Edit menu and select “Emojis & Symbols.” That produces this palette:

Now just find the emoji you want (try using the categories, or the search box) and double-click it to squirt it into your document, wherever the insertion point is. You have to double-click the smaller version. The larger version at top right won’t do anything when you click it, no matter how many times you try.

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