The Windows 11 Emoji Panel is a quick way to type emoji 😁, symbols §⁜✓, emoticons :), kaomoji (❁´◡`❁) and even animated GIF’s into any Windows app, document, slide, email or message.
We’re talking about the Emoji Panel or ‘keyboard’ which appears in Windows 11 when you press Win + . (Windows key plus period/fullstop) or Win + ; (Windows key plus semi-colon).
If you have Windows 10, there’s a different Emoji Panel, see All about the Windows 10 Emoji Panel
The Emoji Panel works with any Windows app that has a text entry including any version of Microsoft Office. Also messaging apps like WhatsApp or Signal and text entry boxes on web site.
However, not all apps/web boxes can accept emoji or some more unusual symbols because it depends on what types of symbols that app will accept.
Top buttons
The top buttons take you to different lists of symbols within the Emoji Panel.
Most Recently Used – MRU list of past selected emoji only. For new users, it will show popular emoji.
Emoji – all the emoji supported by Windows.
GIF – Animated GIF’s provided by an outside service.
Kaomoji – a mainly Japanese form of text based emoji.
Symbols – many symbols like currency, punctuation and geometric.
Clipboard – shows what’s saved in the multi-item clipboard, more commonly accessed via Win + V.
The arrow at right of a list, click on that to go to the full emoji or GIF list. The buttons act the same as the top row buttons.
Emoji
Windows Emoji Panel, as the name suggests will insert Emoji into any Windows app including Word documents, Outlook emails and PowerPoint slides.
Emoji are the apps primary focus to the exclusion of other types of symbols.
Recently used emoji are first or some popular emoji if the panel hasn’t been used before.
Scroll down to see categories of emoji:
- Smiley faces and animals
- People – includes body parts, especially hands
- Celebrations and Objects
- Food and Plants
- Transportation and places
- Symbols – includes hearts, squares, circles, clock faces.
Hover over an emoji to see its name which appears to be the official Unicode name for that emoji.
Each emoji has other text keywords to help searches, see below.
Skin Tones
The Windows 11 Emoji Panel supports skin tones/colors for emoji of people or body parts. Select an emoji then choose a skin tone from the six choices. The default is yellow (which looks more like a bad case of jaundice)
As you can see, not only is the skin color changed but also other body parts (e.g hair).
GIF
Microsoft has contracted with Tenor to supply animated GIF. Type in a search and matching GIF’s will be downloaded.
The ‘up’ arrow button shows ’Trending’ GIFs
Searching the Emoji
The search box at the top will find emoji and GIF only. Type in a keyword or two.
Each emoji has been tagged with mostly hidden keywords except for the label seen in the tooltip. For example, searching for ‘smile’ finds various emoji even though most don’t have that word in their main label e.g. ‘grinning face’, ‘smiling eyes’, ‘cat with tears of joy’ etc.
Kaomoji
Kaomoji are a mostly Japanese form of ASCII art using punctuation. It’s like the familiar emoticons 🙂 🙁 for smile/frown but a lot more complicated.
The list starts with the Classic Ascii Emoticons then to vastly more complicated ones.
Kaomoji panel has no search or even text labels to explain what each one means.
Symbols
Many but not all Unicode characters are listed under Symbols.
- General Punctuation
- Currency Symbols
- Latin Symbols – includes letters with accent, grave, umlaut.
- Geometric symbols – arrows, boxes etc
- Math symbols – fractions, Roman numerals
- Supplemental
- Language Symbols
Like Kaomoji, there’s no search and hovering the mouse pointer only shows a smaller version of the symbol.
Clipboard
Shows the contents of the multi-item Clipboard. It’s the same view as pressing Win + V to see what’s available to paste.
The Emoji Panel is mainly used with a mouse pointer but the Tab key does work to move around the panel.
Symbols and Emoji in Office for Windows and Mac
Emoji Panel is part of Windows that totally sucks
All about the Windows 10 Emoji Panel
Don’t miss the better clipboard in Windows 11 & 10
Solving Word’s Ctrl + F find problem
