USA TODAY International Edition
Cook a cool mashup in Google’s ‘ Emoji Kitchen’
Ever wondered what it would look like to mix and match your favorite emoji? Google is letting you play mad scientist and merge emoji to create a new one.
Google’s new “Emoji Kitchen” feature lets you cook up new combinations using its virtual keyboard app, Gboard, on Android devices.
You can tap on any smiley emoji and the Emoji Kitchen feature will produce a number of mixed and matched stickers for you to choose from. The optional keyboard app for Andrioid and iOS users includes such features as multilingual typing and built- in Google search.
Google says each emoji sticker is handcrafted by Google designers.
“We affectionately refer to this feature as Emoji Kitchen, because you can explore new ‘ recipes’ of expressions using your favorite emoji as ingredients,” said Jennifer Daniel, Google’s creative director of emoji, in a blog post.
Two emoji are smooshed together to create a hybrid emoji. And, the keyboard feature produces some fun and wacky results. For instance, if you tap the cowboy hat emoji, you’re presented with an array of options including laughing cowboy, heart- eyed cowboy, ghost cowboy or even kissy cowboy.
Other cool combinations include a kissing face with glasses, a red heart money- mouth face or even a robot face with tears of joy.
You can start playing chef with Emoji Kitchen now, as Google has rolled it out to Android users for use on apps such as Gmail, Messages by Google, Messenger, Snapchat and WhatsApp.
If Google’s mashups are too tame, you can check out popular Twitter account, the Emoji Mashup Bot, which isn’t affiliated with Google. The account has garnered more than 320,000 followers since its debut in July 2019. The Twitter account, created by student Louan Bengmah, features the results of new emojis produced by two or three random emojis every hour.