Picking emoji on Gboard is now easier with this latest redesign
A lot of us don’t typically think of the keyboard as an app, but it’s definitely crucial infrastructure to the whole Android experience. Google has long had a finger in this pie with Gboard, up there amongthe best keyboard apps on Androidfor all the right reasons. The running goal now is to rack up more great features; the company hopes a redesigned emoji picker utility will be one of them.
In the latest Gboard beta (download thruAPK Mirror), Google has moved a few buttons and UI elements around to make the emoji search experience more natural. The instant you tap the emoji button on Gboard, you will see a new persistent bar at the top with a search box, back button, and page name mentioned.
The current Gboard emoji picker
The back button is a helpful touch, just like the dedicated search bar which previously appeared only for GIFs and regular emoji. In the new interface, you could use the search box to find your desired emoticon or sticker as well, making the visual experience consistent across all the emoji picker tabs. The Search feature also helps declutter the top bar of the Stickers tab.
The beta Gboard emoji picker
Speaking of the emoji category tabs, they remain positioned at the bottom of the screen, sandwiched between the ABC button to return to the alphanumeric keyboard, and the backspace key. Google now showsEmoji Kitchen stickerswithin the emoji picker instead of above it.
Interestingly,9to5Googlereports that at least one user found the ABC button in the bottom left corner missing while scrolling through the redesigned emoji picker. Perhaps it’s an A/B testing issue, but hopefully the button makes it to the stable version of the Gboard app. If you don’t use emoji as often, Gboard has many othertips and tricks to boost your productivity.
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