How to copy an emoji
- Type a word into the search box, such as heart, laugh or thumbs up, or pick a category tab.
- Choose a skin tone at the top right if you want one. Emojis that come in tones switch to it.
- Click an emoji to copy it, then paste it anywhere. Each one you click is also added to Your characters, so you can build a string and copy it in one go.
Emojis are characters
An emoji isn’t a picture file: it’s a character, like a letter, with a code point in the Unicode standard. That’s why you can paste it into any text box and why the same emoji looks different on different systems. Some emojis are made of several characters joined together, such as family groups, flags and skin tone versions, which is why deleting one can take more than one press of Backspace.
Skin tones
Five skin tone modifiers, based on the Fitzpatrick scale used by dermatologists, can follow emojis of people and hands. The default yellow is meant to be neutral. Pick a tone at the top of the picker and every emoji that supports tones switches to it, so the one you copy already has the tone attached.
For arrows, check marks, currency and maths symbols, use the special characters picker. To strip emojis from text, use remove emojis.