How to get emoji symbols on your Android phone

Earlier this month, iOS users got some sweet new emoji symbols — including a secret (but easily unlockable) Spock Vulcan salute emoji. But what about Android users? While Android has been a little slower to make emoji as commonplace as Apple, that doesn’t mean you can’t be part of the cool crowd if you’re not an iPhone user. Here’s how to get emoji on your Android device:

Step 1: Check to see if your Android device can see emoji

Some Android devices can’t even see emoji characters — if your iOS buddies keep sending you text messages that appear as squares, this is you. If you’re not sure if your device supports emoji, you can easily find out by opening up your Web browser and searching for “emoji” in Google. If your device supports emoji, you’ll see a bunch of smiley faces in the search results. If your device does not, you’ll see a bunch of squares.

If your device does not support emoji, you can still get emoji by using a third-party social messaging app such as WhatsApp or LINE. However, you will only be able to see emoji inside these apps; any SMS messages you receive will not continue to not display emoji.

Step 2: Turn on the emoji keyboard

Even if your Android device supports emoji, your default keyboard may not include them. If you have Android 4.4 or higher, the standard Google keyboard has an emoji option (just type a word, such as “smile” to see the corresponding emoji). You can change your default keyboard by going to Settings > Language and input > Default and choosing the keyboard you want to use.

You can switch between keyboards by swiping down to open the Notifications area and tapping Choose input method.

You can only switch between keyboards while you’re typing in a text box area, but you’ll know this because a small keyboard icon will appear in your Notifications bar.

If you’re using a Samsung device, the default Samsung keyboard has built-in emoji that you can access by tapping and holding the microphone button and then pressing the smiley face icon.

Step 3: Download a third-party keyboard

If your device didn’t come with a keyboard that has built-in emoji, you can download a third-party keyboard that does. The most obvious choice is Google Keyboard (available to all Android devices running 4.0 and higher), but other keyboards such as Swype, SwiftKey, and Minuum also have built-in emoji.

Finally, a small warning: If you’re on a limited texting plan, you may want to check to make sure your device sends emoji as emoji symbols (i.e., Unicode characters), and not as MMS or picture messages.