The latest iOS update vastly improved picking emoji, but actually increased the total number of icons you have to scroll through to find the perfect one. The recently-used section is fine, but the order can be inconsistent. Instead, ditch the Apple keyboard altogether for a custom emoji picker.
Emoji++ is a 99-cent keyboard that allows you to save your favorite emoji in any order you want. You can quickly add hair-flip woman to your Snapchat stories, comment with an Amercan-flag emoji to your friend’s patriotic Facebook posts and follow up with the blushing emoji immediately after sending an iMessage to the wrong person.
If a whole keyboard for emoji is too much for you, there’s also the 99-cent Swype keyboard, which has its origins in the Seattle startup Swype, acquired by Nuance Communications. Known as an inventive way to input text with one hand, and the thing that made you want an Android phone before iOS 8, the keyboard also allows you to search for emoji. Just type (or Swype) in the name of an emoji, then tap the one you want in the suggestion above the keyboard.
It works best with emotions, not objects. For example, “eggplant” doesn’t suggest any emoji and “star” is not the oft-used shooting star icon. You also can’t use multi-word phrases, like Ferris wheel. Both Emoji++ and Swype stick to just the standard emoji as well, so you’ll have to switch to the Apple picker for choosing different skin tones.
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