How to insert Emojis anywhere with this Mac keyboard shortcut

Check out this simple keyboard shortcut to display the Emoji picker anywhere on your Mac, and express yourself using them in Mail, Notes, Pages, Safari, third-party web browsers, and everywhere else.

Mac Emojis picker window showing favorite emojis

Whenever you’re typing on your Mac, you might have a sudden urge to add an emoji to what you’re trying to say.

Emojis can help get your point across when words simply aren’t enough, and they can be used throughout stock and third-party apps in the macOS operating system, as well as online via supported websites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Although the Messages app already has a handy-dandy emoji button built into the text field box, other apps throughout macOS aren’t as Emojified. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to bring up the Character Viewer from any place on Mac where emojis are supported.

How to bring up emoji keyboard on Mac

For apps where a dedicated emoji picker button isn’t displayed, you can use a simple emoji keyboard shortcut on Mac to show the Character Viewer and input any emoji:

Control + Command + Space

This keyboard shortcut brings up the following pop-up in any text field.

Mac Emoji Keyboard

In addition to using the small picker, you can also click the expand button from the top right to make the emoji window bigger with useful categories.

Emoji Picker options button

Once open, you can browse through emojis categorized in the picker, see all your frequently used emojis, favorite emojis, and you can even search for emojis using the search bar at the top of the pop-up.

Along the bottom of the picker are little shortcuts that let you quickly sort through groups of emojis. This may help speed up the process of searching for a specific emoji that you might be looking for.

Happy Emoji-ing!

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