What Is a Kaomoji?

Quick answer: a kaomoji (顔文字, from kao, face, and moji, character) is a Japanese emoticon drawn with text characters and read upright, like (＾▽＾) or (╥﹏╥). Western emoticons such as 🙂 are read sideways, but a kaomoji faces you directly and usually adds arms, cheeks, or props to show a feeling.

People also search for them as kamoji, Japanese emoticons, Japanese emoji, or Japan smileys. All of those names describe the same thing: a face built from Unicode symbols that you can paste anywhere plain text is accepted.

This page is a kaomoji library and a set of tools in one. Browse 25 groups of faces, star the ones you use most, attach any face to your own message, or open the maker and design a new one from parts. Because a kaomoji is ordinary text, it works in places where pictures and stickers are blocked, such as usernames, bios, comments, code reviews, and game chats.

• 25 Mood and animal groups
• 5 Built-in kaomoji tools
• 0 Sign-ups or downloads

Kaomoji Copy and Paste in Four Taps

1. Find a face: Pick a mood chip such as Happy or Bears, or search a word like sleepy.
2. Tap to copy: Tap the face itself or its Copy button; a green tick confirms it.
3. Paste it: Long-press or press Ctrl+V in any chat, bio, caption, or document.
4. Keep favourites: Tap ☆ on a card, and it opens the list on your next visit.

Pasting into Discord or Reddit? Set Paste into to the matching app first. Both apps treat backslashes, underscores, and asterisks as formatting, which is why a shrug so often loses an arm there; the escaped copy keeps every stroke in place.

Which Types of Kaomoji Are There?

Group	Example	Typical use
Happy and excited	ヽ(・∀・)ﾉ	Good news, greetings, cheering a friend on
Cute and kawaii	(◕‿◕✿)	Soft captions, aesthetic bios, sweet replies
Love and hugs	(づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ	Partners, best friends, thank-you notes
Sad and crying	(╥﹏╥)	Bad days, sympathy, dramatic jokes
Angry and annoyed	(＃｀Д´)	Playful complaints, rage at a game boss
Shocked and nervous	(⊙_⊙)	Plot twists, surprise news, awkward moments
Internet classics	¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)	Memes, forums, gamer humour
Animals	ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ and (=^･ω･^=)	Pet photos, cute usernames, fandom posts
Actions and props	(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻	Flipping tables, running late, casting spells

How Are Kaomoji Faces Built?

Almost every kaomoji is assembled from the same five parts, read from the outside in. Swap one part and the emotion changes completely, which is exactly how the maker on this page works.

Part	Common characters	What it adds
Arms	ヽ ﾉ ٩ ۶ づ ┐ ┌	Waving, cheering, hugging or shrugging
Face edge	( ) ʕ ʔ ꒰ ꒱ ༼ ༽	A plain head, a bear, a soft round cheek or a dramatic frame
Cheeks	* 〃 灬 ⸝⸝	Blushing, sparkle, or shyness
Eyes	^ ◕ ಠ T ≧ ≦	The main emotion: joy, cuteness, disapproval, tears, laughter
Mouth	▽ ω ‿ Д 益 ε	Grin, cat mouth, smile, shout, gritted teeth, kiss

Many of these characters were borrowed from other writing systems. ಠ is a letter of the Kannada script of southern India, ω is the Greek omega, ツ is the katakana syllable tsu, and ᴥ comes from a phonetic alphabet. Their shapes simply happen to look like eyes, noses, and mouths.

Kaomoji vs Emoji vs Emoticons: What Is the Difference?

	Kaomoji	Emoji	Western emoticons
Looks like	(＾▽＾)	A small colour picture	🙂
Reading direction	Upright	Upright	Tilted 90 degrees
Made of	Several text symbols	One picture character	Two or three punctuation marks
Appearance	Same shape on every device that has the font	Drawn differently by Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft	Same everywhere, but some apps swap it for an emoji
Range of feeling	Very wide, with arms, props, and actions	Wide, but limited to the approved set	Narrow
Allowed in usernames	Often, as long as the app accepts Unicode	Rarely	Usually

How Do You Type Kaomoji on a Phone or Computer?

Windows 10 and 11

Hold the Windows key, tap the full stop, then switch to the 😉 tab. Windows lists dozens of kaomoji grouped by feeling.

iPhone and iPad

Add the Japanese Kana keyboard in Settings, switch to it, and tap the ^_^ key for a long scrolling list of faces.

Android with Gboard

Open the emoji panel and tap the 🙂 tab. Gboard groups its text faces the same way it groups emoji.

Mac

Turn on the Japanese input source, type かお and press the space bar. The suggestion list fills with faces.

Any device, faster

Open Kaomoji Keyboard Shortcuts above and download a text replacement file, so shrug or bear expands into the face as you type.

Straight from this page

Bookmark it and star your favourites. They stay at the top, along with the 12 faces you copied most recently.

Where Can You Use Kaomoji?

App	Works?	Watch out for
Discord	Yes	Markdown eats backslashes and underscores; pick Discord under Paste into
Reddit	Yes	Same Markdown issue, and a caret ^ turns text into superscript
Instagram and TikTok	Yes	A 150-character bio fills quickly, so set Max length to check it
WhatsApp and Telegram	Yes	Text between two underscores turns italic
X (Twitter)	Yes	Some uncommon symbols use up two of the 280
Games and usernames	Often	Some games allow only basic letters; test a short face first
Email and documents	Yes	Pick a font with wide Unicode coverage so no boxes appear

Faces marked. Most devices use stacked accent marks or characters added to Unicode more recently. They look right on current phones, but an old computer may show a small empty box instead.

Where Did Japanese Emoticons Come From?

The sideways 🙂 was suggested by computer scientist Scott Fahlman at Carnegie Mellon University in 1982. Japanese users went a different way: the upright (^_^) is usually credited to Yasushi Wakabayashi, who posted it on the ASCII NET network in 1986. Japanese keyboards could already type thousands of full-width characters, so faces quickly grew arms, blushes, and props.

In the late 1990s and 2000s, the giant forum 2channel turned kaomoji into an art form, giving the world characters like Shobon (´・ω・｀) and long ASCII art scenes. Western forums later added their own classics, including the shruggie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and the Lenny face ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), which first spread on 4chan in 2012.

Kaomoji Words Worth Knowing

顔文字 (kaomoji)

Face characters: the Japanese word for text faces of every kind.

Kawaii

Japanese for cute; used for soft, round faces with blushes and flowers.

Shobon

The droopy, dejected face (´・ω・｀), a 2channel favourite.

Shruggie

The nickname of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, the internet’s I-don’t-know.

AA (ASCII art)

Larger pictures made of text, the big sibling of the one-line kaomoji.

Full-width characters

Wide East Asian forms such as （ ）and ＾ that give faces their rounder look.

What Can the Kaomoji Tools on This Page Do?

Maker

24 starting presets and over 1 million part combinations.

Auto faces

Adds a face that matches each sentence’s mood.

Meaning decoder

Explains eyes, mouths, arms, and props.

Sticker PNG

Square images from 128 to 1080 pixels.

Shortcut files

Text replacements for Mac, iPhone, and Windows.

Safe copying

Escaped versions for Discord and Reddit.

Can’t find the exact face you have in mind?

Build it from arms, eyes, and a mouth, then save it to your own collection.

✎ Open the Kaomoji Maker

Why Does My Kaomoji Look Broken?

What you see	Why it happens	Fix
Small empty boxes	The device font lacks one character	Choose a face labelled Works everywhere, or update the system
A shrug missing its left arm	Markdown treated the backslash as an escape	Copy with Paste into set to Discord or Reddit
Part of the face in italics	Two underscores or asterisks were read as formatting	Use the escaped copy, or Code style
The face turned into an emoji	The app auto-converts simple emoticons	Pick a longer kaomoji; apps only swap short ones like 🙂
Lenny’s eyes float out of place	The font draws accent marks at another height	Try a different font, or choose a Lenny variant without stacked marks

Tips for Using Kaomoji Well

Match the face to the tone

A table flip in a work chat reads as a joke; in a complaint it reads as rage. Let the face carry the tone you mean.

One face per message

A single well-chosen kaomoji lands better than three in a row.

Short faces for bios

Profile fields are tight, so a five-character face like (˘ω˘) leaves room for words.

Test before a username

Paste the face into the app’s name field first; some games quietly strip symbols.

Kaomoji FAQ

What does kaomoji mean?

It is Japanese for face characters: kao means face and moji means letter or character. It names upright text faces such as (＾▽＾).

How do you pronounce kaomoji?

Say it kah-oh-moh-jee, with four even syllables.

Is it kaomoji or kamoji?

Kaomoji is the correct spelling. Kamoji and kaomji are common typos for the same thing.

What is the plural of kaomoji?

In Japanese, the word does not change, so one kaomoji and ten kaomoji are both correct. In English, kaomojis is also widely used.

Are kaomoji the same as Japanese emoticons?

Yes. Japanese emoticons, Japanese smileys, and kaomoji all refer to text faces read upright rather than sideways.

How many kaomoji are on this page?

More than 1,200, split into 25 groups. Download all puts every face in a single .txt file.

How do I copy a kaomoji on a phone?

Tap the face once. That copies it, and a small note pops up near the bottom to confirm.

Can I add my own words to a kaomoji?

Yes. Write your words in the message box, then use the Your text menu to put the face after them, in front of them, or on both sides.

Why does the shrug lose its arm on Discord?

Discord reads the backslash as a formatting escape and hides it. Choose Discord under Paste into, and the copied face includes the extra backslashes it needs.

Do kaomoji work on Instagram and TikTok?

Yes, in captions, comments, and bios. A few faces with stacked accent marks may look slightly different between Android and iPhone.

Can I use a kaomoji in a username?

Often, if the app accepts Unicode in names. Gaming platforms are the strictest, so keep the face short and test it.

Which kaomoji is the most popular?

The shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, the table flip (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ and the bear ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ are among the most copied faces online.

Which Windows shortcut opens the kaomoji list?

Press the Windows key + full stop to open the emoji panel, then choose the 😉 tab to see the built-in text faces.

Is there a kaomoji keyboard for iPhone?

The free Japanese Kana keyboard has a ^_^ key full of faces. Add it under Settings, General, Keyboard.

How can I make my own kaomoji?

Open the Kaomoji Maker on this page, choose arms, a face edge, cheeks, eyes, a mouth, and an extra, then copy or save the result.

What does ಠ_ಠ mean?

It is the look of disapproval. The eyes are the Kannada letter ಠ, and the face says you are not impressed.

What is the difference between kaomoji and emoji?

Emojis are single picture characters drawn by each phone maker. Kaomoji are built from several ordinary text symbols, so they look the same wherever the font supports them.

Why do some kaomoji show boxes?

The font on that device is missing a character. Faces labelled Works everywhere avoid rare symbols, so they are the safest choice.

Can I turn a kaomoji into an image?

Yes. The Kaomoji Sticker Image tool draws any face on a square PNG, with a transparent or coloured background.

Are these kaomoji free to use?

Yes. They are plain text, free to copy for personal posts, schoolwork, streams, and business messages.

Does this page store what I type?

No. Everything runs in your browser; your starred faces and saved creations are kept only on your own device.

Find Your Kaomoji

(＾▽＾) ♡ ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

Over 1,200 Japanese text faces, ready to copy in one tap. (◕‿◕) Copy a Kaomoji