Download Article
Plus, we go over some FAQs about emojis & Dictation
Download Article
Dictation is a tool available to iPhone users that allows them to speak what they want to type instead of typing it themselves. It's great if you need to write a message hands-free if your hands are occupied, or if you have a disability that makes it hard to type on your phone. But how exactly do you insert emojis when using Dictation? Thankfully, the answer is simple—say the word "emoji" after the name of the emoji you want to add. In this article, we go in-depth about how to dictate emojis on iPhone and give you the words to say to dictate some of the most popular emojis .
Quick Steps
- Open the note, text, email, or whatever else you want to dictate.
- Tap the microphone button below your keyboard.
- Say the name of the emoji plus the word "emoji" (i.e., "heart emoji").
Steps
Section 1 of 3:
How to Dictate Emojis
Download Article
-
1Navigate to where you want to dictate the emoji. This could be in a text, email, Notes app note, or anywhere else you can type with text-to-speech (Dictation). [1] X Research source
- Note:
Before you can dictate emojis, Dictation must be enabled. To enable Dictation, follow these steps:
- Go to Settings > General > Keyboard .
- Scroll down until you see Enable Dictation .
- Toggle on Enable Dictation . If you want Dictation to automatically add punctuation, toggle on Auto-Punctuation as well.
- Note:
Before you can dictate emojis, Dictation must be enabled. To enable Dictation, follow these steps:
-
2Tap the text field to open the keyboard. You should see a microphone icon in the lower right corner. If you don't, make sure Dictation is enabled.Advertisement
-
3Tap the microphone icon under your keyboard. This will activate Dictation. Your phone will vibrate, and there will be a microphone symbol in the text field to let you know that Dictation is active.
-
4Say the name of an emoji followed by the word "emoji." If you don't include the word "emoji," your phone won't know that you want to add an emoji to what you're writing. For a list of popular emojis and their names, jump to the next section in this article. [2] X Research source
- For example, if you want to add a smiling emoji to your text, say "smiling emoji" to your phone when Dictation is active.
- In order for your phone to type the correct emoji, you must use its pre-defined name. If you don't know the name of an emoji, check Unicode's full list of emojis
.
- Note that not every emoji can be dictated. For example, "smiling face with smiling eyes" (or 😊) won't show up if you say "smiling face with smiling eyes emoji." Instead, your phone will write "smiling face with smiling 👀."
- Some emojis can be dictated with different names. For example, if you say "loudly crying emoji" or "sobbing emoji", your iPhone will write 😭 for both.
-
5Tap the microphone icon again to turn off Dictation. If your phone didn't type the right emoji, delete it and tap the microphone button to try again.
Advertisement
Expert Q&A
Ask a Question
200 characters left
Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered.
Submit
Advertisement
Video
Tips
- If the talk to text feature on your iPhone isn't working, check out our guide to troubleshooting Dictation on iOS .Thanks
Submit a Tip
All tip submissions are carefully reviewed before being published
Name
Please provide your name and last initial
Thanks for submitting a tip for review!
Advertisement
References
About This Article
Advertisement
