You Can Get “Blob” Emoji Back on Your Android Phone
I’m generally an Apple person, but even I can admit that Android “blobs” were the best emoji. They’re cute, funny, unique, and they were unfairly removed in 2017 to make Android emoji look more like everyone else. It’s a damn shame, but it’s not a shame what you have to live with. If you have an Android phone, you can bring back the nag emoji right now.
To get started, you’ll need Gboard installed on your phone. Of course, if you have a Pixel, you already have Gboard. Then go to Gboard Settings then Emoji, Stickers & GIFs and turn on Emoji Stickers . Once this is configured, there are several ways to resurrect blobs.
The first one caught my attention with this r/Google Reddit post and uses the Gboard emoji merge tool to resurrect the icons we know and love. For the uninitiated, the emoji combiner is an automatic feature that merges two emoji together to create a new one that doesn’t normally exist. You can enter an emoji and a crying face together to create a new smiling crying face, or an angry face with a shocked face to create an angry, shocked face. Funny stuff!
But, unbeknownst to many, if you combine an emoji with a star emoji (✨), Google won’t combine them. Instead, it will preset you with the version of the emoji you just typed in, along with other recommended drops to choose from on the right. All you have to do is open the emoji keyboard, then type in your emoji followed by asterisks. It won’t work with all emoji, but you should have plenty of drops to choose from.
Nag emoticons also exist in the form of stickers.
The stellar method isn’t the only way to use blobs in chats. Android Authority has demonstrated this alternative method : open the emoji keyboard, tap the stickers icon at the bottom, then tap (+) to find new sticker packs. Scroll down a bit and you should see “The Blobs Live On” and “Long Live the Blob”. Click “Add” on both.
Now at any time you can click on any set of stickers to choose from a variety of animated drops. You can send a dramatic eye roll, a mischievous devil, a holiday turtle, whatever suits your current mood.