Emoji Copy and Paste

Find an emoji by name, tap it, and it is copied

Tap any emoji on the keyboard above and it is copied right away and also dropped into the message box at the cursor. If you only need one, tap it and paste it where you want it. If you want to string several together or mix them with words, build the message in the box and press Copy message. Each copied message stays behind as a bubble, so a greeting you use often can be copied again in one tap.

The list holds 1,914 Unicode emoji (up to Emoji 17.0), 330 skin-tone variants of people and hand emoji, and 112 text emoticons picked by Roberin. Names and search words come straight from the English data in Unicode CLDR, so everyday words such as “heart”, “cat” or “birthday” find what you expect. Stickers you buy in a messaging app are pictures, not characters, so this tool cannot copy them.

When copying an emoji is handy

• Typing on a computer: on Windows, hold the Windows logo key and press the period (.); on a Mac, press Fn or the globe key together with E. Both open an emoji window. When that window is awkward for finding a word or stringing several together, it is quicker to search here, build the message and paste it once.
• Usernames, profiles and bios: fields with a character limit often count one emoji as more than one character. The count under the message box shows characters, UTF-16 length and bytes, so you can check the fit before you paste.
• Group announcements and greetings: for lines you send often, such as birthday wishes, congratulations or a cheer, build the message with emoji once and copy it again from the sent-message bubbles.
• Documents and web work: the selected-emoji card copies the U+ code and the HTML character reference (&#x…;) so you can drop them into a Unicode chart, developer notes or page source.
• Changing the mood: text emoticons, known in Japan as kaomoji, are faces drawn with ordinary characters, such as ٩(◕‿◕)۶. They are grouped by feeling, from joy and sadness to greetings.

How to use it

1. Search: type a word and every emoji whose name or keywords contain it appears. An exact name match comes first, and a phrase such as “smiling face” keeps only emoji that contain every word. Paste an emoji to look up its name, or type a code such as U+2764 to find the emoji with that code.
2. Browse: tap a category tab above the keyboard to jump to it, and the tab follows as you scroll. Recently used and Favorites come first and text emoticons come last. Size lets you choose small, medium or large.
3. Tap: tapping an emoji copies it and adds it to the message box. Tap the box first to move the cursor and it goes in at that spot. With a keyboard, press Tab to enter the list, use the arrow keys to move and Enter to choose.
4. Edit the message: you can type in the message box, and the ⌫ button deletes the one character before the cursor (an emoji with a skin tone counts as one). Copy message copies everything and leaves a bubble under Sent messages.
5. The selected-emoji card: it shows the last emoji you tapped with its name, category, Emoji version, release year and whether this device draws it as a picture. Pick another shape in the skin-tone row to copy that one, and open the build to see which pieces it is made of. Tap a keyword to search with it.
6. Showing hidden emoji: newer emoji that this device's font cannot draw are hidden from the start. Press Show under the keyboard to bring them back, which helps when you are writing to someone with a newer device.

How combined emoji are built

Many Unicode emoji are not one character but a sequence of several code points. Unicode Technical Standard #51 sorts them into a few kinds. A skin tone is a “modifier sequence”: one of five modifiers based on the Fitzpatrick scale follows a person or hand emoji. A flag is a “flag sequence”: the two letters of a country code are written as two regional indicator symbols (🇦 to 🇿). A numbered keycap is a digit followed by the emoji presentation selector (FE0F) and the combining enclosing keycap (20E3), and the flags of England, Scotland and Wales are a black flag followed by tag characters.

The most common kind joins emoji with a zero width joiner (ZWJ, U+200D), forming a “ZWJ sequence”. 👩 woman joined to 💻 laptop makes 👩‍💻 woman technologist, and ❤️ joined to 🔥 makes ❤️‍🔥. Of the 1,914 emoji in this tool, 249 are ZWJ sequences, and 230 of those sit in People & Body, covering jobs, families and actions. When a device font does not know a combination, the pieces show up one by one, and the build on the card lists exactly those pieces.

The names in the build column are the Unicode CLDR 48.2 English names. Symbols that also existed as plain text characters, such as ❤️, get FE0F added so they show as a picture, and the name for 1️⃣ is the name of the whole emoji.

How long is one emoji: characters and bytes

The same emoji has a different length depending on where it is counted. To the eye 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 is one character, but JavaScript and web input fields count UTF-16 code units, which makes it 11. The HTML standard measures an input's maxlength as the string length (a count of code units), so in a field limited to 20 characters this family emoji leaves room for only 9 more. Files and databases usually store UTF-8 bytes, where the same emoji takes 25 bytes.

If an emoji turns into “?” or will not save in a username or a forum post, the service may store at most 3 bytes per character. The MySQL documentation says the utf8mb3 character set does not support supplementary characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) and uses up to 3 bytes per character; storing them takes utf8mb4, which uses up to 4 bytes. Most emoji sit outside the BMP and will not fit such a column. Only the 184 emoji whose code points are all inside the BMP, like ⭐ and ❤️, might go in. Whether a service accepts them varies, so save one and check.

Choosing a text emoticon (kaomoji)

A text emoticon strings together characters from many scripts, such as Japanese kana, Korean letters, Greek, Cyrillic, Kannada and math symbols, to draw a face or a gesture. Unlike emoji there is no standard list, so Roberin picked 112 that are widely used and hold together on most devices, and sorted them by mood. Type a mood or an animal such as “sad”, “cheer” or “cat” in the search box and that group appears too.

Text emoticons are drawn with ordinary fonts, not the emoji font, so their width changes with the device and app, lines can drift out of line, and some characters may show as boxes. Ones that use Korean letters or Kannada need a font that supports those scripts to display properly.

Why emoji look different on each device

Unicode only fixes a number for each emoji. The picture is drawn by each company, such as Apple, Google, Samsung or Microsoft, in its own font, so the same 😅 can look a little different on the recipient's phone. New emoji arrive with each Emoji version, and if a device font does not know that version yet, you see a box, or a combined emoji falls apart into pieces.

When the page opens, it draws, for each Emoji version from 11.0 (2018) onward, the first emoji of that version on a canvas that is not shown, and hides the emoji of any version that comes out without color. Versions before 11.0 are assumed to work on every current device and are not tested. Flags are checked separately, because on a device with no flag pictures 🇰🇷 shows up as the two letters K and R. You can bring hidden emoji back with Show and copy them, and if the recipient's device supports that version, they will see the picture.

Common points of confusion

• ☺ and ☺️ can look different: a character that began as a plain symbol may appear as a black-and-white symbol in some apps unless the emoji presentation selector (FE0F) follows it. This tool always copies every emoji in its full form with FE0F.
• A skin-tone emoji splits into a hand and a colored square: if the recipient's font lacks that skin-tone shape, the base emoji and the tone swatch appear separately. For an older device, the default (yellow) shape is the safe choice.
• Copying fails: the browser may have blocked clipboard writing, or it may be an old browser. Press and hold the text in the message box, or drag to select it, and copy it by hand.
• The character count does not match: services differ in whether they count visible characters, UTF-16 or bytes. All three are shown, so check which one the service uses and match against it.

Limits and cautions

• Names and search words use the English data of Unicode CLDR 48.2 as is, so some names may sound odd and an emoji may not turn up for the word you expected.
• The new emoji of Emoji 18.0, released on September 15, 2026, are left out because CLDR has no English names for them yet. They will be added when the next CLDR is out.
• Device detection guesses from one representative emoji per Emoji version, so on a device that supports only part of a version, an emoji that was not hidden can still show as a box.
• A skin tone applies to every emoji at once. Combinations such as 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 where each person has a separate skin tone are not offered.
• The 112 text emoticons are a list chosen by Roberin, not a standard.
• Recently used, favorites and sent messages are saved only in this browser and never sent to a server. In private browsing, or in a browser that blocks storage, they disappear when you close the page.

Sources

• 01Unicode Technical Standard #51: Unicode Emoji (Version 18.0, Revision 31)Definitions of modifier (ED-13), flag (ED-14), tag (ED-14a), keycap (ED-14c) and ZWJ (ED-16) sequences; Emoji 18.0 release date 2026-09-15
• 02Unicode emoji-test.txt, Version 18.0The list of emoji, categories and versions this tool's list is based on
• 03Unicode CLDR: Short Names and KeywordsSource of emoji names and keywords (this tool uses the CLDR 48.2 annotations)
• 04WHATWG HTML Standard: maxlengthInput length is measured with the string length, which the Infra Standard defines as a count of code units
• 05Microsoft: Windows keyboard shortcutsWindows logo key + period (.) or semicolon (;) opens the emoji panel
• 06Apple: Mac User Guide, Use emoji and symbols on MacFn or globe key + E, or Edit > Emoji & Symbols
• 07MySQL 8.4 Reference Manual: utf8mb3BMP characters only (no supplementary characters), up to 3 bytes per character. utf8mb4 uses up to 4 bytes

Frequently asked questions

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