Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Quick Emoji on Desktop

! When this was first published, Facebook and other apps did not have desktop emoji support. Even now, it's a bit clunky and cramped so this post might still be helpful

I love using emojis on mobile. It's childish, but I entertain myself by posting eleven cry-laughing faces in a row; or any insane flood of emotional responses and random items. I find that it adds a bit of dimension to plain raw text without having to find the exact rage comic or photo to accompany a quick message.

Even my wife sends entire emoticon shopping lists.



On desktop, however, it's annoying to have to Google a set of icons to use for just a casual Facebook interaction. Using Chrome, I created a bookmark and made a short keyword to quickly launch a preferred page of symbols.

Link a Page to a Keyword

I've been using this set of "facebook symbols" because its layout is decent, the emoji organization is similar to my Android, and it automatically copies single selections and it can copy an entire string of emoticons. Something like Emojipedia is not as rapid-user friendly.
  • Navigate to Chrome Settings (chrome://settings)
  • Scroll down to the Search category and click Manage Search Engines
  • Scroll to the bottom the lower box (Other search engines
  • Type a page title in the Add a new search engine box. Something like Facebook Emojis will do
  • Pick a short keyword to launch the page. For my Facebook Emojis page, I entered fbe here
  • Finally, paste the URL of the page in the last textbox
  • Click Done and close Chrome Settings
Now simply open a new tab (Ctrl+T) and type your keyword to launch the page.