MacBook Emojis! 😀

<^ CTRL> + <⌘ CMD> + <SPACE BAR> loads the MacOS emoji menu

Emojis are exciting; honestly one of the most reliable to ways to convey emotional content in the written word. They might not be viewed as professional, but I honestly feel that moderate use can increase productivity and streamline communications.

Until recently, I'd only been incorporating emojis into my writing while typing on my iPhone; iOS makes it clear and easy how to access the menu. Now that I am blogging, writing //comments and texting regularly from my laptop, I desired a way to implement emojis directly from MacOS. The first solution I found was Rocket , a clever app that listens to your keyboard input and offers a popup menu when you type : followed by a search term. This works well, despite popping-up unwanted during some JS ternary operator implementations. The other issue was the lack of search; I believe he offers a paid upgrade to add searching, but as it stands the emoji pop-up only displays a few options based off of the actual name for each emoji. It's difficult to get the exact emoji you want at times, since the real names for each emoji can be somewhat obscure.

Then I happened upon a blog post that showed what I'd been seeking all along: built-in MacOS support for emojis! Simply press <CONTROL> + <COMMAND> + <SPACE BAR>, and a floating menu pops up with categorized tabs, search functionality, and your frequently used (my top 5 right now: 💩🤦‍♂️😀🐍😂). I've since disabled Rocket from loading on startup, but I will leave it installed for now, just in case. Otherwise, this "hidden" secret functionality seems perfect. What other "secret" keyboard shortcuts have you been using? 👩‍💻🎸

Photo in cover image by Vanessa Bucceri on Unsplash