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How to use Google Messages' Photomoji feature
We thought emojis and stickers were the end of it, until Google brought Photomojis - your personalized expressions in the Messages app
Google celebrated a billion monthly active RCS users in November 2023, and it wasn't without gifts. To express gratitude, the company released seven new features in the Google Messages app, including Photomoji. Emojis, GIFs, and stickers exist in the app to enrich your texting experience and help you convey the right expressions. Photomoji applies a personal touch.
Slack offers several features that make communication easy and fun for the team. One fun part of using Slack is its deep integration of emojis. You can send emojis in chats to convey the tone of your message. You can also use emoji reactions to express yourself without typing a word. Emojis are fun and improve your team's communication. That's why, apart from its built-in emoji library, Slack allows users to install custom emoji packs and create custom emojis.
One UI 6's best feature is Samsung's new emojis
They look better and they're easier to understand — what's not to like?
Samsung's Android 14 update, One UI 6, is finally widely available after a months-long beta period. Phones like last year's flagship S22 series have started getting the latest software, and many devices that don't have it yet are expected to see the update soon. It's a fairly meaty one, with lots of improvements like a better first-party weather app, a retooled quick settings panel, and more. Samsung's also introduced a whole new suite of emojis, replacing the style the company's been using since 2018 — an upgrade that I think was long overdue.
Gmail will soon let you react to emails with an emoji
Other Gmail users will see it appear at the bottom of the email
If you rely on emoji to quickly react to messages on your mobile device, you might wish you could use them in other circumstances. Instead of typing a full email response, for example, perhaps you could benefit from being able to convey thoughts with a simple emoji. Now, Google wants to bring this to fruition for Gmail users. The company is supposedly working on adding the option to react to emails directly within Gmail.
Think you can design an emoji everyone will use? Now’s your chance
The future of texting is on the line!
History is filled with examples of humans telling stories and conveying ideas through detailed imagery rather than written words. It began with early cave paintings and Egyptian hieroglyphs, but we have since evolved to the more nuanced and unassailable dominance of emoji as our preferred pictograph; and why wouldn’t we, those others don’t even have a way to tell people it’s time for a burrito 🌯⏰. But like any language, emoji must evolve, and the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee — or little picture gods — are preparing to look over 👁👁 suggestions from the internet to determine our texting 📱 future.
WhatsApp web adds a feature the Android app has had for 5 years
New image editing tools are rolling out now
It's been nearly five years since WhatsApp implemented a series of image editing features in its mobile apps, but both the web and desktop clients had yet to receive the same treatment. When sending an image, you could only add a caption and that was it. But with the desktop clients becoming more independent thanks to multiple device support, it seems that the service's devs have decided that a bit of feature parity would be welcome. And that's how we find ourselves looking at a whole new image editing suite in WhatsApp web.
How I make emojis legitimately useful (and fun)
These tiny graphics can help organize and visualize your digital life
I love organizing my digital (and real) life. To me, there are very few things as satisfying as neat lists, folders, and categories, that I can quickly parse in order to find what I want. While lots of apps offer a decent level of structure and customization on my phone, I still find myself looking at long lists of text-based items more often than I'd like, hoping I'd quickly spot the one I want before resorting to pulling up the search bar and typing it. A few months ago, it occurred to me that my phone has a free and built-in tool that could help me visually mark every item in a list: Emojis. It sounds both silly and obvious, doesn't it?
The Google Messages emoji picker is getting a handy makeover
Stickers and GIFs will be easier to insert
Google Messages isn't as vanilla as it used to be and it's constantly picking up new features. Recently, we spotted some neat message categorization features and Google is now shipping a redesigned emoji picker.
Since its launch last year, Meet has grown up to be a sophisticated video conferencing tool that's suitable for a wide range of applications, from casual chit-chat to full-blown virtual classes. Google is now working on introducing more safety and engagement features to Workspace for Education accounts, one of which is the ability to react using emojis — a feature that was added to Duo last year.
Android 10 users get access to Android 11's new emojis in a quirky way
Gboard and Messages work hand-in-hand to give you new smileys
On almost every OS and platform, support for new emojis usually requires a software update. This is generally the case with Android too: a new version brings the ability to display new emojis system-wide then Gboard gets updated to support sending those. We're on the cusp of a change, though, as Android 10 users have suddenly gained the ability to display and send 11's smileys through a combination of Gboard and Messages.
Back when I was six years old, a teacher showed us the image of an animal and asked us what it was. Several students answered "hippopotamus," and I was left wide-eyed and speechless. I was not used to being one of those who didn't know something, so the feeling stuck with me and I started working harder to avoid being as clueless as I was that day. If that incident is still imprinted in my memory, you can imagine that the hippo holds a special place in my heart too. My husband would tell you that I made him walk the entire Valencia Bioparc twice on our honeymoon because we missed the hippo on our first pass. That's why I like Unicode 11, as the hippo finally gets a much-deserved emoji in it, and now it's available in WhatsApp beta. (Talk about a long-winded intro!)
Last week, a tweet from a Danish media analyst contrasting Google and Apple's hamburger emoji designs set the internet ablaze. Google's take on the emoji, which places the cheese below the patty, drew the ire of many. Less than 12 hours later, Google CEO Sundar Pichai responded, reassuring everyone that the company would address the matter immediately. While the world waits to see whether Google changes (some would say, corrects) the architecture of its Android hamburger emoji, there is one update to share: Googlers were served "Android Burgers" on Friday – and, yes, the cheese was kept below the beef patty.
While I'm sure very few people have yearned for a broccoli or a cricket emoji on WhatsApp, there are plenty of other emojis that were still missing from the app compared to the Android 8.0 emoji set and Apple's latest set. The monocle, star eyes, swearing face, vomiting face, shushing face, exploding head, and many more were still missing from WhatsApp even when the app revamped its entire emojis early this month and introduced its own set.
WhatsApp has always used iOS' emoji designs and fonts in all of its apps. Whether you're on iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Symbian, or desktop, you would see the same emojis independent of your device's built-in emojis. That created a unified approach to avoid any confusing moments like, "you sent me a gun!" and "I said it was a water gun!" However, it looks like WhatsApp is now breaking the shackles of its iOS emojis... somewhat.
I'm personally not a huge fan of Android O's updated set of emoji, and judging by our poll from last month, neither are many of you. But in case you ever want to use them in your own projects, Google has uploaded all of them to GitHub.
Today Facebook has announced a bunch of new ways to add a bit more fun to video messaging via its Messenger platform. You can now add animated emojis which augment your own reactions in real time, overlay a variety of filters to jazz up your video feed, and take advantage of some new mask options. And if any of those new features result in an image you'd love to save, you can even capture screenshots from video chats directly from the application.
Emojis, there are thousands of them and yet you always seem to be looking for that one emoji that doesn't exist yet. Did we have to wait this long to have a facepalm or crossed fingers? I guess we did. Anyway, let's skip the pointless blabber and go straight to the point: WhatsApp has new emojis on Android.
Chrooma Keyboard is one of those keyboards I can always recommend to people who like the Google Keyboard but want something more out of the experience. I have been using it on and off since it got updated to v3 in June and I love its adaptive colors that fit with whatever app you're using, extensive gestures, multilingual support, and customizable action row. But since some of these features were already added to GBoard recently, there were fewer reasons to use Chrooma... until this new v4 update came rolling.
Android 7.0 marked the first time that Android had more emojis than iOS and although that gap was closed with the release of iOS 10, Nougat 7.1 is here to take the lead again. We're not talking about a couple of new emojis, but dozens of new ones and hundreds of variations on them and on existing ones. Without further ado, let's see what's new with Android 7.1's emoji situation.
