Emoji Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows & Mac

You use emoji on your phone without thinking twice. But on a computer? Most people either avoid emoji entirely or go through the painful process of Googling an emoji, copying it from some website, and pasting it in. Turns out, both Windows and Mac have built-in emoji pickers that open with a single keyboard shortcut. Once you learn these shortcuts, you'll use them dozens of times a day.

Windows Emoji Shortcut: Win + .

This is the one shortcut every Windows user should know:

Press Windows key + Period and an emoji picker pops up right where your cursor is. From there you can:

• Search by name: Type "fire" to find 🔥, "heart" to find ❤️, "laugh" to find 😂
• Browse categories: Click the icons at the bottom to browse smiley faces, animals, food, etc.
• Use recently used: Your most-used emoji show up first
• Access symbols too: Click the Ω (omega) tab to find symbols like →, ©, ™, °

The Hidden Tabs Most People Miss

The Windows emoji picker has three tabs at the top that most people never notice:

1. 😀 Emoji tab — the standard emoji everyone knows
2. ;) Kaomoji tab — Japanese text faces like (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ and ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
3. Ω Symbols tab — this is the goldmine. Currency symbols (€ £ ¥ ₿), math symbols (± ÷ × ≠), arrows (→ ← ↑ ↓), and more.

That symbols tab alone replaces a lot of trips to Google. Need a degree symbol °? An em dash —? A bullet point •? They're all there.

Windows Version Notes

• Windows 11: Full emoji picker with search, categories, skin tone selection, GIF search, and clipboard history
• Windows 10 (version 1903+): Same Win + . shortcut, slightly older design but fully functional
• Windows 10 (older): Basic emoji panel, no search. Update Windows to get the full version.
• Windows 7/8: No built-in emoji picker. Use the on-screen keyboard (osk.exe) or copy-paste from a website like iLoveSymbols.

Mac Emoji Shortcut: Ctrl + Cmd + Space

Press Control + Command + Space and the Character Viewer opens. This gives you access to every emoji, symbol, and special character that exists in Unicode.

Quick Mode vs Full Mode

By default, Mac shows a small floating emoji panel. But there's a much more powerful full-screen version:

• Quick mode: The small floating panel. Good for quickly inserting common emoji.
• Full mode: Click the icon in the top-right corner of the small panel (or the ⊞ expand icon) to open the full Character Viewer. This shows technical details, Unicode names, and lets you browse by category with much more precision.

Alternative: Globe Key (Newer Macs)

On MacBooks from 2020 onwards (with the M1 chip or later), the bottom-left key was changed from Fn to a Globe 🌐 key. Pressing it toggles between input sources, but you can set it to open the emoji picker instead:

1. Go to System Settings → Keyboard
2. Under "Press 🌐 key to", select "Show Emoji & Symbols"
3. Now a single key press opens the emoji picker

This is arguably even faster than Ctrl + Cmd + Space since it's a single key.

macOS Tips

• Search works great: Type "check" to find ✓ ✔ ☑, type "arrow" to find → ← ↑ ↓, type "star" to find ★ ☆ ⭐
• Favorites: Right-click any character and "Add to Favorites" for quick access
• Recently used: Shows up automatically at the top

Chromebook Emoji Shortcut

Chromebook's emoji picker is simple but functional. It opens a floating panel with search and categories. No symbols tab though — for special characters beyond standard emoji, you'll want to visit a site like iLoveSymbols and copy from there.

Linux Emoji Input

Linux is more fragmented since it depends on your desktop environment:

• GNOME: Right-click in a text field → "Insert Emoji" or use Ctrl + . in GNOME 3.34+
• KDE Plasma: No built-in emoji picker by default. Install emote (snap install emote) or ibus with emoji support.
• Unicode input: On most Linux systems, press Ctrl + Shift + U, type the hex code (e.g., 2764 for ❤), then Enter.

Emoji Shortcuts Inside Specific Apps

Beyond the system-wide pickers, some apps have their own emoji shortcuts:

Slack

• Type : followed by the emoji name: :thumbsup: → 👍
• Press Ctrl + Shift + \ (Windows) or Cmd + Shift + \ (Mac) for the full Slack emoji picker

Discord

• Same :name: syntax as Slack
• Click the smiley face icon in the message box
• The system emoji picker (Win+. or Ctrl+Cmd+Space) also works in Discord

Microsoft Teams

• Type ( followed by the emoji name: (smile)
• Or click the smiley face icon below the message box

Google Docs

• Insert → Special characters — opens a searchable character map
• You can also draw a symbol and Google will try to match it
• Or use the system shortcut (Win+. / Ctrl+Cmd+Space)

Beyond Emoji: Special Characters and Symbols

Emoji are great, but sometimes you need actual text symbols — things that look the same on every platform and don't turn into colorful images. Stuff like:

The Windows Ω tab and Mac Character Viewer both include these symbols, but browsing them in a categorized website is honestly faster. Check out our full symbol collection — we've organized 60+ categories with one-click copy.

Quick Reference Cheat Sheet

Wrapping Up

Two shortcuts. That's all you need to remember:

• Windows: Win + .
• Mac: Ctrl + Cmd + Space

These give you instant access to emoji and a huge range of symbols right from your keyboard. No more Googling, no more copying from random websites (well, unless you need something specific — then iLoveSymbols has you covered with one-click copy for 60+ categories of symbols).

The best part? These shortcuts work in almost every app — browsers, email clients, word processors, messaging apps, design tools. Learn them once, use them everywhere.