How to Create Custom Emoji Mashups on Android
Nowadays, you have so many emojis at your fingertips that they have practically become their first language. However, sometimes you find that there is none that matches exactly what you are trying to say. Solution? Mix the two to create your own.
All you have to do is get your hands on the Gboard Android keyboard, which lets you mix two different emojis to create new ones using the Emoji Kitchen feature. (IOS users will need to use the website to build their mashups.)
Emoji Kitchen launched back in February, but now that it has been out for a while, we’ve checked out again what kinds of crazy scientist-like creatures you can cook.
For example, you can add a head exploding effect to yawning emojis to add even more emphasis when your friend shares a secret, or you can get extra spooky Halloween vibes by mixing the skull with the face of the flashlight.
However, be aware that your possibilities for combining are not limitless. Emoji Kitchen only supports certain emoji and most of them just add faces to inanimate objects or change the expression of the emoji. You also can’t directly edit the final product – Gboard does the editing and gives you a choice of mashups to choose from.
All emojis on the face seem to work, as well as a few or commonly used inanimate objects such as hearts, but you will see a ghostly “Nothing to see here” animation if you cannot combine the selected emoji with another.
How to Create New Emoji in Emoji Kitchen Gboard
Even if you can’t use certain emoji or directly edit the end results, the hybrid emoji stickers that Gboard spits out are pretty good, and it’s a great way to personalize your messages without using an additional app or third-party website .
- Open a text-entry app, and then open the emoji section of Gboard. (Note: Gboard should be the default keyboard app).
- Click on the emoticon. Make sure to test several emoji to see which ones are supported. If you do not see any suggestions for combinations, it means that the application you are using does not support the Emoji Kitchen feature.
- If an emoji can be customized or combined with another, Gboard will offer several suggestions in the menu above the keyboard. This may take some time.
- Review the suggested combinations and select a new emoji to insert into your message.
Update 10/22/20: We originally published this story in February 2020. We updated it in October 2020 with new examples (and a little help for iOS users who are missing out on the fun stuff).