Typing Emoticons on PC

Typing Emoticons on PC

Emojis are very popular especially on the smartphone, but they are also available for the computer. Brighten up emails and text files easily with the mini images.


Especially on the smartphone, people massively replace pieces of text with pictures; called emojis. On the keyboard of a smartphone or tablet are rows full of funny pictures and in many apps such as WhatsApp too. But on a physical keyboard of a computer they are missing. It only contains letters, numbers and punctuation marks.

However, emoticons, also called smileys, can also be used on a PC. You can do this by making your own combinations of the keys. For example, type a colon and closing parenthesis for a smiling face 🙂 or with a dash for the nose :-). But there is also an opportunity to bring out the familiar faces of the smartphone on the Windows computer or Mac.

Follow the steps below on a Windows 10 computer. Not sure which version is on your PC? Look it up via the tip ‘Which Windows 10 version do I have?’:

  • Open a program in which you work with text, such as an e-mail or Word document.
  • Click where the emoticon should be.
  • On the keyboard, simultaneously press the Windows key (with Windows logo) and the dotted key.
  • A window with all available emoticons displays. Click on the desired image. The picture is in the text.
  • Click the cross in the top right to close the window or click anywhere outside the emoticon window.

On a Mac it goes like this:

  • Open a program in which you work with text, such as an email or a note.
  • Click where the emoticon should be.
  • Press the Cmd key, Control key and the space bar on the keyboard at the same time.
  • A window opens. Click on the left side if necessary emoji.
  • You will see an overview of all available emoticons. Click on the gray emoticons in the bottom row to see more images in different categories.

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  • Click on the desired image. The image is then placed in the text.
  • The window will close automatically when the emoticon is placed.

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