Emoji Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows, Mac, Chromebook and Linux

Plenty of people still get emojis onto a computer by searching for “fire emoji”, copying it from a results page and pasting it back. There is no need to. Windows, macOS and ChromeOS each have an emoji keyboard shortcut that opens a built-in picker, and most Linux desktops have one in some apps. Chat apps add a faster method on top: shortcodes.

I make an emoji extension for Chrome, Use Emoji, so I have a stake in this topic and I will get to it near the end. The OS shortcuts come first, because for a lot of people they are all they need.

Emoji keyboard shortcuts at a glance #

Windows emoji shortcut: Win + . (period) #

1. Click into a text field, such as a chat box, a document or the browser's address bar.
2. Press Win + . (the period key). Win + ; opens the same panel.
3. Type to search, for example heart. The panel filters as you type.
4. Move with the arrow keys and press Enter, or click the emoji you want.

The Windows 11 version of the panel also has tabs for kaomoji, symbols and GIFs, and it keeps your recently used emoji in the first row.

Emoji shortcut on Mac: Fn + E or Control + Command + Space #

All three of these open the same Character Viewer:

• Fn/Globe + E, on Mac keyboards that have the 🌐 symbol on the bottom-left key.
• Control + Command + Space, which also works on external keyboards without a Globe key.
• Edit > Emoji & Symbols in the menu bar of most apps.

The viewer opens next to your cursor with the search field focused. Type a word and press Return, or click an emoji. If you use it a lot, go to System Settings > Keyboard and set the Globe key on its own to open Emoji & Symbols, so it takes one key instead of two.

The button in the top-right corner of the popover expands it into the full Character Viewer. That is where arrows, currency signs, math symbols and the rest of Unicode are.

How to get emojis on a Chromebook #

Press Search + Shift + Space, or right-click a text field and choose Emoji. The picker has search, recent emoji, and tabs for symbols, emoticons and GIFs. Chromebooks with a touchscreen also have an emoji key on the on-screen keyboard.

Emoji picker on Linux (Ubuntu, GNOME and other GTK desktops) #

On GNOME and other GTK desktops, apps built with GTK open an emoji chooser with Ctrl + . or Ctrl + ;. The chooser is part of the GTK toolkit, not the desktop, so it only appears in GTK text fields. Apps that draw their own text fields, including Chrome and Firefox, don't respond to the shortcut. Some distributions add an input-method emoji picker with its own shortcut and settings.

So if most of your typing on Linux happens in a browser, the OS doesn't give you a dependable shortcut. The two methods below work the same on any OS.

Emoji shortcut not working? Fixes for Windows 11 and Mac #

On Windows

1. Click into a text field first. The panel only opens where you can type, so it won't appear over the desktop or a full-screen game.
2. Try Win + ; instead of Win + ..
3. Close keyboard remapping tools and gaming overlays one at a time. Some of them take Win + . for their own use.
4. Restart the Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service. Open Services from the Start menu, find the service, and choose Restart. The emoji panel depends on it.
5. Sign out and back in, or restart the computer, if none of the above helps.

On a Mac

1. Click into a text field, then try the other shortcut: Control + Command + Space if Fn + E did nothing, or the reverse.
2. Open System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts and look for another shortcut that uses the same keys. Apps such as launchers and window managers sometimes claim Control + Command + Space.
3. Use Edit > Emoji & Symbols from the menu bar. If that works, the problem is the shortcut, not the viewer.

Emojis in Outlook, Teams and Google Docs #

The system shortcuts work inside most apps, because the operating system inserts the emoji, not the app. Win + . on Windows and Fn + E on a Mac work in Outlook, Teams and Google Docs.

Microsoft Teams also accepts shortcodes in the desktop app. Type a colon followed by a name, such as :smile, and Teams suggests matching emoji. In the new Outlook, put the cursor in your message and choose Insert > Emoji to open a searchable emoji pane. Google Docs has the same Insert > Emoji menu, and you can also type @ followed by a word, such as @smile, to search for an emoji inline.

Emoji shortcodes like :fire: in Slack, Discord and GitHub #

With any of the pickers above, you stop typing, open a panel, search, pick and go back to your sentence. Shortcodes skip the panel. They are short names between colons that the app replaces with an emoji.

In Slack, :tada: becomes 🎉, and :+1: or :thumbsup: becomes 👍. After a colon and a couple of letters, Slack shows a list of matches, and Tab or Enter inserts the first one. Discord and GitHub work the same way. After a few weeks, codes like :fire:, :eyes: and :pray: come out without thinking about them.

Shortcodes belong to each app, though, not to your computer. Type :fire: in Gmail, LinkedIn, X, WhatsApp Web or Notion and it stays as the text :fire:.

How to type emoji shortcodes on any website #

I built Use Emoji to fill that gap. It is a free emoji keyboard extension for Chrome with two parts, and because it runs in the browser it behaves the same on Windows, macOS, ChromeOS and Linux.

The picker

Click the toolbar icon or press Alt + Shift + E (⌥ ⇧ E on a Mac). The picker has all 1,870 emoji in Unicode's Emoji 15.0 set, searchable by name or keyword. Clicking an emoji copies it to the clipboard. Your most used emoji stay at the top, there are six skin tones, and you can switch between Native, Apple, Google, Twitter and Facebook styles. The picker is free, needs no account and doesn't ask for access to any website.

:emoji: codes on the sites you choose

Turn Use Emoji on for a site and shortcodes work there the way they do in Slack. Type a colon and two letters to get suggestions under the cursor, then press Enter or Tab. You can also type the closing colon and :fire: turns into 🔥 on the spot. Pressing undo straight after a conversion brings the code back. It works in Gmail, Slack, Discord, X, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Telegram, Reddit and Notion, in both plain text boxes and rich editors.

This part changes text inside web pages, so it needs permission, and it asks for none when you install it. In the product's own words: “Use Emoji runs only on the websites you allow and asks just once for each. Other sites stay untouched.” It skips password fields and code editors, it matches what you type locally without sending it anywhere, and Alt + Shift + I turns typing off when you want ordinary colons.

Custom codes

You can also make your own codes, such as :addr: for your address, :meet: for a meeting link or :sig: for a sign-off. A code can hold any text, link or emoji up to 64 characters, and it takes priority over a built-in code with the same name.

Typing codes comes with 10 free replacements and 1 free custom code. Use Emoji Pro removes both limits for $5 a month, $25 a year or $39 once. The extension runs in Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera and Arc, and the listing on the Chrome Web Store has Google's Featured badge.

To try shortcodes without installing anything, use the online emoji keyboard, which runs the same engine in the page. The emoji shortcode list has the code for every emoji.

Kaomoji and symbols #

The shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, the degree sign, a check mark ✓ and arrows like → are just as awkward to type. The shrug has an extra problem: apps that treat the backslash as an escape character drop its left arm when you paste it.

Use Emoji has codes for these too. :meh: types the shrug with both arms and :tableflip: types the table flip. There are 2,714 codes in total, 2,356 of them kaomoji, plus arrows, currency, math, Greek letters and dividers. If you'd rather copy and paste, there are free pages for kaomoji, text symbols with their Alt codes and Mac keys and shrug emoji.

Which method to use #

• If you use emoji now and then, mostly outside a browser, learn your OS shortcut.
• If most of your writing happens in a browser, shortcodes are quicker, and an extension makes them work in Gmail and LinkedIn as well as Slack.
• If you use Linux or switch between several computers, a picker that lives in the browser works the same on all of them.

Why emoji counts differ

Unicode's official count for Emoji 18.0 is 3,972. That number counts every skin-tone variant and multi-person sequence as a separate emoji. Pickers usually list each base emoji once and apply your skin tone to it, so their counts are lower.