Here’s how to find a secret emoticon keyboard for your iPhone...

Tears of joy: Emojis have become an increasingly popular mode of communication in the past year
PA
Hannah Al-Othman26 February 2016

With Emoji the fastest growing language in the UK and evolving faster than ancient forms of communication, power users are always looking for ways to get ahead in the game.

Luckily, iPhones have a secret Kaomoji keyboard, which allows users to make more detailed emoticons such as ¯\(ツ)/¯ using formations of Japanese letters.

The Kaomoji keyboard is inbuilt on iPhones, although it does need to be activated first.

To find it:

  • Open up Settings on an iPhone and go to General -> Keyboard -> Keyboards
  • Go to "Add New Keyboard" and select "Japanese", followed by "Kana"
  • Open up a typing window, and select the keyboard by pressing the globe icon
  • Press the ^_^ character on the bottom left followed by the up arrow on the top right of the keyboard

Dozens of plain text emoticons will then appear, allowing users to quickly text dozens of kaomoji.

To get back to the normal keyboard, users just need to press the globe icon again.

As with emoticons, the Kana keyboard will show the most recently used emoticons, which can be found by pressing the ^_^ in the bottom right.

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