As we become more accustomed to communicating via text message rather than talking to one another face to face, the humble emoji takes on ever greater importance in communicating emotion, mood and meaning. But when the emoji alone isn’t quite enough, there’s another landmark solution on your phone that will revolutionise the way you express yourself. Welcome to a world where there are no limits to the emoji you use – and your phone is on your side.
Picture needing to convey your irritation with your roommate’s early morning jazz sessions in a way that an angry face emoticon just doesn’t quite capture. You envision a mad face with top hat, thrusting a stop sign emblazoned with a saxophone and a big red X in its pointy hand. This detailed, visually specific scene – to express your annoyance in just this way – could not have been depicted through innovation until quite recently: it seemed like a pipe-dream.
The game has changed: the latest release of iOS 17 has added the ability to stack infinite emojis, creating bespoke, elaborate emoji messages directly from your phone. It’s not just using emojis like words: it’s a form of digital art.
To get started, on your phone, select a starting point for a sticker picture – a base layer emoji, which can be a regular emoji, though choosing a larger sticker by dragging an emoji into the chat bar gives you a larger canvas than a standard-size emoji. You can also set a memoji sticker as the base layer, which gives you even more ideas on how to express yourself.After you pick and send the base layer, the canvas is set – it’s your time to stack the rest of the emojis. All you have to do is just hold, drag and drop emojis into the chat.
Every time you add an emoji, your phone sends a little vibration as though you had pressed the button multiple times. It’s as though you’re creating multiple messages, and getting tactile feedback on how your creative process is going. And don’t worry if you mess up. You can edit your composition by changing, or even deleting, layers. In this way, GIFs offer a means of digital expression that carefully matches the complexity and richness we associate with traditional artistic media.
If you want to do that with an emoji stack, you’re going to have to work a little harder – particularly if you use emojis with more options in terms of skin tone. But it’s still possible to make your emojis send exactly the message you want them to.
CreditEmoji stacking is just the start of that story: it’s a whole pipeline of opportunities to make your phone better at dynamic, expressive communication. Here are some little-known iOS tricks that make it easier to navigate, screenshot and even save yourself a little time.
For those who want to learn more about how their devices can work for them, try experimenting with shortcuts such as the iPhone’s two-second trick that minimises swiping; or discover how to care for your phone with tips on cleaning charging ports and closing apps. Learning how our technologies work can not only improve our devices – it can also help us to better navigate our digital lives.
For all the ways our phones are merely conduits, they’re also stages for sophisticated feelings and thought, thanks to emoji stacking. Digital communication evolves. And our phones let us convey feelings and scenes with emoji that couldn’t be described with words. With each new round of human-looking machines, technology’s future as an art-making tool looks brighter. And whether it’s through emoji stacks, or swiping secretly by swipes, or through any other hidden feature, there is a lot of room in our phones to make our communications more ornate, by enriching them with the details of our personality and vision. Use these tools. Divert your cunning through them in as many directions as you can. Make every message a miniature masterpiece. The potential to express yourself fully has never been more available. Our phones, those handheld devices we use for accessing the world, now allow us to communicate – to the fullest extent and with a specificity unlike anything else, anywhere else. Explore the creative messaging that your phone unlocks.
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