How To Have Quick Access To Your Favorite Emoji Characters

It is fairly easy to find and type emoji and other special characters on your Mac. But you can also create a customizable list of favorites that are always available.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to have quick access to your favorite Emoji & Special Characters.
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When you want to type an emoji or other special character typically you would use one of two keyboard commands. I'll demonstrate here in the Messages App. The typical place where you might want to type an emoji character. You can either hold down the Control and Command Keys and press Space to bring up the Emoji & Special Character Viewer or you can use fn, also known as the Globe Key, and e. Both will bring up this special viewer here. Then you can scroll through all of the different Emoji & Special Characters, use the row at the bottom to jump to different categories or Search at the top. Also at the top you will see Frequently Used Emoji. That will automatically update based on your use. Below that you can see I've got something called Favorites. Chances are you probably don't see Favorites there and are wondering how I got these characters to be there and how you can get them too and edit them to include the ones you want. 
So to get this special Favorites section you first have to understand that the Emoji & Special Character Viewer has two modes. The regular mode which is this. But also a second mode which is simply the Character Viewer. This mode actually goes back many more years than this special emoji viewer here. You can get to it by clicking on this button at the top right corner of the window. When you do that you can see it changes to the Character Viewer and if you've been using Macs for a long time you probably recognize this view. Here on the left are different categories. You can select the category, like say Emoji, and then you can get subcategories and then you can scroll through what you've got there. But you can go to other categories as well like Arrows, for instance, or Bullets & Stars. At the top you've got Frequently Used which is the same as what you see in the Emoji Viewer and you also have Favorites. Or you may not have Favorites at all. 
Here's what you may see. No Favorites there at all. You can easily create Favorites by simply adding your first Favorite. So, find any character that you may want to use all the time. I'll go here and select this one here, which is Face with Tears of Joy. Notice there is a button here Add To Favorites. This only appears in the Character Viewer. Not in the Emoji Viewer. So you have to switch to this mode to add Favorites. I'll add this as a Favorite and now you can see that the Favorite Section appears. If I go to it I can see that one there. If I continue to go and add more, so let's add this character here, let's add this one here, let's go to another section and maybe add another character there. You can continue to add to Favorites and then when you go to Favorites you'll see all those there. If you want to get rid of one simply go to Favorites, select the one you want to get rid of, and use Remove From Favorites button. So you can customize this to your liking. You can even drag and drop to change the order. 
Now if you simply close this Character Viewer Window you're going to find out you've got a problem. The next time you use a keyboard shortcut, like Control Command Space or Globe e, you're going to be in Character Viewer here, have this Special Window. You want to get back to the regular Emoji Viewer. Sometimes, however, you do get the Emoji Viewer, like if you click this special button in the Messages App up here it will bring up the Emoji Viewer. But let's get it so that when you use a keyboard shortcut it brings back the Emoji Viewer as well. 
To do that simply click that same button here at the top right. Now you get something that looks like the Emoji Viewer but it is still a Special window. Just Close that. Now the next time you go and use a keyboard shortcut it will return to the Emoji Viewer just like before. But now under Frequently Used you'll also have Favorites, and you can use one of these to quickly get the emojis that you want easy access to.
Now if you don't use emoji at all you can still use this feature to get access to other symbols. So let's go back to the Character Viewer here and you could see I can get to, say, Mathematical Symbols. I can easily add this to Favorites as well. You can get to all sorts of other symbols for whatever it is you do and whatever things you use when writing and add those as characters that you have easy access to inside of Favorites here. 
Note the there are more categories than are listed here. If you click here you can customize this list and notice that only a small selection of the character sets are available. So, for instance, if you want musical symbols I can simply turn this On and I click Done. Now I can see musical symbols here at the bottom and I can see these and I can easily add those to my Favorites as well and then see them here and see them in the regular Emoji Viewer so I can easily add them.
There are other ways to make Emoji easily available to you. For instance, here I've started a new Note called My Emoji List and I can add emoji characters here and then, even next to them, add descriptions. So if you find you have a hard time remembering what different emojis mean or what your group of friends use them for you can create your own little list here of them. Then when you have an emoji you can easily select it, copy it, and then paste it anywhere. Of course you can always search for emoji characters as well because at the top here you've got Search. You can search for something like that and it will look up the terms in the descriptions for each of these to give you results. But you could also search online. So you can search, say, for something like that and then you're going to get all sorts of different results here. Maybe go to one of many websites that talk about emoji and you'll usually find a copy button or you can just select the character yourself and copy and then paste it. You're actually getting the emoji just as if you selected it from here like that. 
Now I know a lot of you are going to ask, well what about on the iPhone and iPad. The Emoji & Special Character Viewer that looks similar to this, where is the Special Section there. Sadly it appears that Favorites is only on the Mac. So the Mac has a little bit of an advantage here with this Special Favorites Section in the Emoji & Special Character Viewer. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 9 Responses to “How To Have Quick Access To Your Favorite Emoji Characters”

Hal Plimpton

8 months ago

Helpful, but curious how Memojis fit in the mix…or do they? Thanks Gary…Hal

Gary Rosenzweig

Hal: Memojis aren't characters like this. They are special pieces of animated media that work in the Messages app and a few other places.

Henning

Hi Gary, do you see any possibility, to use the "Stickers" (animated "Emojis") from Telegram in Apple's Messages?

Henning: As graphics maybe? I don't have any experience with that function in Telegram. But what happens if you copy one and paste it? You probably just get a graphic, right?

henning

Gary, it fills in a "preview" of a file (empty sheet with dogear) and says Animated Sticker.tgs
Made a Screenshot, how can i send this to you?

henning: Just search for "convert tags to image" and a lot comes up.

Thanks a lot!

Ellen Allard

Thanks Gary! This adds a fun element to creating text on the mac. I do wish that the same functionality was available on the iphone and iPad. Maybe someday....

Trudi

7 months ago

Hi Gary. Another great and useful post. Always learning something new from you. Thank you, 👏.

How To Have Quick Access To Your Favorite Emoji Characters

Comments: 9 Responses to “How To Have Quick Access To Your Favorite Emoji Characters”

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