Using Genmoji On Your Mac

With macOS 15.3 you can now create Apple Intelligence Genmoji characters directly on a Mac. You can use these in Messages, Mail and in a variety of other apps for many purposes.
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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at using Genmoji on your Mac. 
With the release of macOS 15.3 you can now create Genmoji characters on your Mac. Previously this was available in version 18.2 of iOS and iPad OS 18.2 as well. Keep in mind that Genmoji's is part of Apple Intelligence so your Mac has to fit the requirements. Check this page if you can't find Genmoji on your Mac. 
So with Genmoji you've got the ability to create characters that look kind of like emoji characters. Little faces, people, or objects. But, in fact, they are regular images just created in this style. In addition to be able to create those a lot of apps support having inline images so they appear as characters in text even though they are not regular characters, like letters, numbers, and regular emoji characters. So, for instance, the Messages app is the primary one that supports Genmoji. Let's take a look at using Genmoji there first. 
So here I am in Messages. I want to type a Genmoji character. I can normally click here and it will bring up the Emoji & Special Character Viewer. I can also use Keyboard Shortcuts, like Control, Command, and Space or the fn or Globe key and e and it will bring up this interface. I can now type to search for an emoji character. But with macOS 15.3 this changes to Describe an Emoji rather than search for one. So I can still search for an existing one. For instance if I wanted to find a Happy Face emoji I can search for happy and it will show me those. But let's say I search for something and it is not there. So you can see I'm looking for a submarine emoji character. There isn't one. So instead I'm going to no results and this button here to create a new emoji. I can click here. I also can click this button here which shows an emoji character and a little plus symbol. I can do that even there are results. So if I search for something like this and I'm just not happy with the standard emoji character I can still click here to create a new one.
I'll do that right here and it is going to give me a little welcome screen the first time I use Genmoji. Now it is going to try to generate an emoji looking character based on the description here. So here it gives me an option and it starts generating other options as well. I can click this little arrow here to go to see some of these other options. If I like one of these I can click Add and it will add it there as an emoji character. So this now can be sent in a message or I can continue to add some text and you can see in Messages it has the standard functionality emoji by itself will appear large. But an emoji with some text will appear inline with the text like this. 
Now note that it saves this emoji character. So if I go and try to type one again you can see it's listed here in my Recents. This little clock here means I'm looking at Recents. But also if I search I'll find standard emoji characters and my own Genmoji characters. 
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Note that you can also Edit the description. So I'm going to try for a submarine again. I'll click create a new emoji and then see what it comes up with. So it is going to start generating ones. But I can edit this here at the bottom. So let me add a little more to the description. You can see now it has changed what it is showing me based on that description. 
Now there are basically three types of emoji characters. There are objects. There are these yellow faces. Also, there are little people. So you can create all three of these kinds of things. So to get a face or a person usually you just describe something that would be a face or a person. You can do something like this and you can see you get a bunch of faces here. You can make sure you only get faces by just adding the word face there. But let's say none of these kind of fit what you want. Now you can go and have it generate a Genmoji. I can also, instead of having it be a face, show a person. So usually you see, say, a person from the shoulders up. So let's go and change face to person. Now up here it's going to ask you to choose a person. It's going to use people from your photos so it is going to choose me because previously I had used Image Playground and I selected myself as the main person. But I can select Choose Person here and I can choose a person. But I can also choose a emoji look. Then I can pick a skin tone, and general appearance here like this. Hit Done and you can see it is going to make a person that fits this description. 
So I don't really know if it is capturing what I want here. Um, maybe I will give it a little bit more direction. Maybe I like this one here. So I can Add this one and it appears as just a regular emoji character. 
One of the main reasons you might want to use Genmoji though is the ability to incorporate yourself or somebody else in your Photos collection into an emoji character. So, for instance, I can go to generate one and I can say, backpacker. But I can change this to choose a person and I'll choose myself from my Photos collection and there I am. Now I have something to send over a message whenever I want to tell somebody that I'm going hiking. 
Now this works in more apps than just Messages, of course. So here I am typing an email and there's a similar button in here for emoji characters. But you can also use the Keyboard Shortcut. I'll do that and you can see I get the same button here to the right or if I just type something. Notice I can also choose one of the ones I previously created. So this is the one I just made before and it puts it in. So I can do it in Mail as well and it appears as a character inline with the text. 
Some other apps will allow you to use it too. Here I am in Notes. Let's have it generate one here and I'll have it create a new emoji. There I go. I'll Add this one there. So you can see it works in Notes pretty well. In Pages, Numbers, and Keynote though it doesn't come up. You can't generate Genmoji there. But you can still use them. So if I go back to my Note here and I Copy this Genmoji from the note and I Paste it in here it is going to paste it in but as an image. 
Let's talk about maintenance for a second here. Let's say that you're using your Emoji & Special Character Viewer and you see your Genmoji in there. The list here is Recents. You can see what is selected here is a little clock. That's Recents. It actually saves the Genmoji characters in Stickers. Stickers have existed for awhile. They are basically emoji created out of photos. So that's not new. But they laid the groundwork for having Genmoji by having inline images in things like Messages and other Text. So they are basically treated as Stickers. If I look here I see some Stickers that I have created. But also some Genmoji. You may actually already have had Genmoji in here because if you created them say on your iPhone or iPad previously then they would sync over iCloud to your Mac. 
If I want to get rid of one like say this telescope here I can Control Click, right click, or two-finger click on it and you can see I can delete right here. New emoji will actually bring back Genmoji with the description of the telescope and it will allow you to generate a new one using that text. Also note that if you just move your pointer over one of these it actually brings up the terms that you used to generate it. Those are the same terms that are used when you use this field to search. So if you have a lot of them you can search for them using the terms you originally used. 
If you get a Genmoji from somebody else, like here is one sent from my real account to the demo account, I can Control Click, right click, or two-finger click on this and go to emoji details. It will bring it up, say it is a sticker, but I can click Save and now when I use the Emoji & Special Character Viewer notice I have it here. 
Outside of using these in Messages I think they can be really useful in presentations because of their nature of just being an object with a transparent background. So I'm going to Copy this little wombat here and go into Keynote and Paste and I'm going to get this image here, which now I can easily use in a presentation without it having to be like this rectangular image with a background and everything. 
So something about Genmoji is you're not going to be able to use certain key words to create Genmoji. Certain things are going to be restricted as you can image Apple doesn't want to necessarily help you generate those. Also, if somebody is using an older Apple device or android device or Windows device that doesn't have the ability to have inline images like that then they will still get it but they will get it as just a regular image attachment to the message. So using Genmoji can be useful in certain circumstances. But also maybe just adding a bit of fun to your communication. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.
Comments: 3 Responses to “Using Genmoji On Your Mac”

Sheldon
4 weeks ago
Thanks Bunches
Piet
I keep getting "No Results" for every prompt on the Mac.
Gary Rosenzweig
Piet: What have you tried to troubleshoot? Restart the app? Log out of your account and back in? Restart your Mac?