The marriage of perpetual emoji fever and iOS third-party keyboard support has now been consummated.
Less than a day after Apple released iOS 8 to the public, several new apps sprung up to make it even easier to insert emoji into conversations on Apple devices.
One of the best early contenders is Keymoji, which functions as a sort of autcomplete for emoji. Typing a word will generate several suggested phrases, each of which is accompanied by the appropriate set of emoji. Selecting one of the phrases inserts it into the text field as emoji instead of text.
It’s here! download #keymoji autocomplete keyboard for #iOS8 FREE until Saturday!! just tap on https://t.co/MYZpmR141B pic.twitter.com/PgU0i2MaJu
— Keymoji Keyboard (@KeymojiApp) September 17, 2014
Literati Labs, the company behind Keymoji, says on the app’s iTunes page that these suggestions, which it calls “definitions,” are all user-generated. The more often users pick a certain definiton, the more prominently it appears in future autocompletes. “We can’t wait to see all the definitions that you come up with!” Literati tells its users.
According to this tweet, Literati sees room for Keymoji to grow, and it plans to do so as transparently as possible.
Announcement: our goal is to be as open our users as possible ab what u want #keymoji to become. it is in your hands. we are merely stewards
— Keymoji Keyboard (@KeymojiApp) September 18, 2014
Another option for the emoji-hungry is Emojiyo. Its unique feature is the ability to save custom sets of emoji for commonly used phrases. The demo shows off saved phrases like “Early bird gets the worm,” “Mind = Blown,” and “Call you soon.”
Apple has supported emoji as part of iOS’ built-in keyboard since the release of iOS 7 last year. Its limited support, however, has left emoji afficianados wanting. Thanks to iOS 8 and its support for third-party keyboards, the wait for improved emoji functionality on Apple devices is finally over.
Photo via Intel Free Press/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)