Google’s Gboard introduces Emoji Kitchen, a tool to mash up emojis to use as stickers
If you’ve ever felt like there just weren’t enough emoji options to express how you’re feeling, a new addition to Google’s Gboard keyboard, launching today, aims to help. Gboard for Android is introducing a feature called “Emoji Kitchen” that allows users to mash up different emoji then use them as stickers when messaging.
The stickers will work across apps, including Gmail, Messages by Google, Messenger, Snapchat, Telegram, WhatsApp and others.
For example, you could add glasses to the various smiley emoji, add a cowboy hat to a ghost, have a robot cry tears, put a monkey face on a cactus (idk either), make the happy poop emoji express love with a heart and so on.
To be clear, you can’t just mash up any of the thousands of emoji with any other one — it only works with those Google supports, which are mainly variations on the smileys. That’s because the emoji aren’t being mashed up in real time through some sort of AI system. Instead, Google designers have created this set of mashups for Gboard, specifically.
To use the option, you first tap on any smiley emoji and Emoji Kitchen will show which mashups are available to you.
Google’s Gboard has long been an experimental app for trying out new ideas in self-expression, including with launches like its own set of personalized emoji, called Emoji Minis, as well as with features like doodling, Morse code input, emoji suggestions and GIFs, and others in years past.