Gboard is one of Google’s feature-packed applications that is great no matter which platform you use it on. It is top-rated on both the Android Play Store and the Apple App Store alike and has been instrumental in bringing features like glide and voice typing to the mainstream. It has also gained quite a few helpful features lately, including the rollout of a grammar check feature using AI that works entirely on-device to preserve privacy.
Now a new feature is rolling out for Gboard that turns your text into emojis via a magic wand. This magic wand appears where the microphone normally resides, and only once you’ve already typed something that the keyboard can associate with Emojis. Android Police describes it as working in the following manner:
There are two modes here — tapping once will put an emoji translation after your text, and tapping it twice will insert one emoji between each word. Sometimes it works pretty well, while in other sentences, it’s kind of a hit-or-miss thing. So far it looks like you need your keyboard set to English, but we may see support for more languages in the future.
Android Police
I could not test this myself as the feature has not shown up for me even though I have the Gboard Beta app installed and updated to the latest version. It seems to be a staged rollout, as others have reported fully seeing this in action, so it is unclear whether you need to be on a specific version of the app to try this out or if you just have to wait your turn as it appears to be an account-level feature. I will be waiting for this to show up on my phone – hopefully soon – as I am curious to try this out. I will you updated if there are any new developments to report on this feature.
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