Most of us are used to using the standard emoji icons/emoticons available via the Unicode Consortium on different platforms. However, the same emoticons can get quite tiring after a little while, and you’ll want something different and more expressive.
On your iPhone, your Japanese keyboard offers a secret keyboard of “Kaomojis.” Kaomojis are literally face emotions made using letters, numbers and symbols, mostly the same way it was done before emoji keyboards were invented. Something like this: (´?_?`)’
This is mostly made possible because the Japanese keyboard has many more characters available than the English (or many other) keyboards. And since the iPhone is super friendly, installing and using the Japanese Kaomoji keyboard is very easy. We’ve gone over how to install the keyboard and use it below.
On your iPhone Home Screen, navigate to “Settings -> General.”
Scroll down and select “Keyboard.”
Select “Add On Keyboard.”
Now the Japanese keyboard is in the Suggested Keyboards for me. But if it isn’t there for you, you’ll need to scroll down and select it. All the keyboards are sorted alphabetically after the initial English keyboards.
Once done, select “Kana” and tap on Done in the top-right corner.
Now you’ll see the Japanese (Kana) keyboard option in your list of keyboards.
To use the Japanese Kamaoji keyboard in any text field, click on the Globe in the lower left corner. If you’re using Swiftkey, hold the Emoji icon and select “Switch To Other Keyboard.”
Keep on tapping the globe until you get to the Japanese Keyboard. The number of taps will depend on how many keyboards you have installed on your iPhone and their level of preference (more on that later).
Once you get to the Japanese keyboard, click on the “Smiley icon” in the bottom left corner, highlighted below:
If everything’s going good, you’ll see a line of Kaomojis on the top of your keyboard. Select the arrow on the right side of your screen to open up the full offering of Kaomojis.
And to get back to your regular English keyboard, just tap the globe button until it pops back up.
So there you have it – hassle:free. Enjoy all those kaomoji. It’s surely something different.
Shujaa Imran is MakeTechEasier’s resident Mac tutorial writer. He’s currently training to follow his other passion become a commercial pilot. You can check his content out on Youtube
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