Hints & Tips #1 - Emoji on iOS

I've been asked about this a few times so I thought it best to set it in stone, or at least in the ever flowing posts of my site.

Emoji are a series of pictograms, similar to smileys but much broader in scope, which originated in Japan, and thanks to mobile computing, their use is spreading fast.

Most modern operating systems allow you to see them in the messages, tweets, and Facebook posts you receive (if not, all you'll see are white squares where those images should be), but how do you get to use them yourself?

Here's how you can activate them on your iOS device, be an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, running iOS 7:

1. Tap on Settings

2. Go to General > Keyboard > Keyboards

3. Tap on "Add New Keyboard"

4. Scroll down until you find "Emoji" and select it

And you're done.

Now open up an app that you can type into. You'll notice that there's a new "globe" key to the left of the spacebar.

Keep tapping on it to cycle through your keyboards or tap and hold to reveal a menu to choose from.

Whichever method you use, this is how you can access all the Emoji your iOS device can read.

Enjoy.