We love texting! And with the updates to iMessage in iOS in recent years, texting is, even more, fun and immersive. So when our predictive text or our iPhone emoji keyboard stop showing up or begin acting wonky, we need a quick fix–and we need it now!
If you’re looking for more general information about iMessage and Messages not working, check out this article.
And if you are finding that your Messages disappeared, check this more detailed article.
So let’s get to it!
Contents
- 1 Quick Tips
- 2 First, The Symptoms
- 3 Next, The Rules
- 4 Finally, The Cure(s)
- 5 Re-Boot Your Keyboard Settings
- 6 Reset Keyboard Dictionary
- 7 Has Your iPhone or iPad Learned Misspellings?
- 8 All About Your iPhone Emoji Keyboard
- 9 No Time? Look at Our Quick Video Tip
- 10 Ever Wonder What Your Sent Emoji Look Like on Android and other Phones (other than iPhone)?
- 11 Wrapping It Up!
Related Articles
- Apple Watch iMessage Not Working
- Want iMessage on your Windows PC?
- iMessage Not Working?
- Game Center Now Uses iMessage to Invite and Play
Quick Tips 
Follow These Quick Tips To Get Predictive Text And Emoji Working Again
- Turn Predictive Setting Off and then On again (and maybe other Keyboard Settings too)
- Reset your Keyboard’s Dictionary
- Check that Emoji is added as a keyboard
- Delete and reinstall Emoji keyboard
- Send an iMessage to yourself with a bunch of emojis to kickstart predictive emojis to work
First, The Symptoms
For some iFolks, after updating to the latest version of iOS, their predictive text and type correct functions for both Messages and Mail suddenly disappear.
For others, their iPhones and iPads are frequently showing misspellings. Or spell check doesn’t appear to work anymore
Some of our readers are not seeing the predictive text emojis popping up when typing words commonly associated with emoji (words like heart, cat, car–things we know have correlating emoji.)
Next, The Rules
For iFolks loving emoji, be aware that predictive emoji are only available in Messages. This feature is not currently available for other apps, including notes, mail, and others.
Make sure you type your message out first and then tap the emoji keyboard.
Emoji replaceable words appear in orange, just tap to replace a word with an emoji!
Also, emoji replacement doesn’t work if you use dictation to type a text. When using diction, you manually type it to be offered emoji replacement suggestions.
Finally, The Cure(s)
Many of our iPhone and iDevice ails are easily solved by disabling and then re-enabling predictive text settings and other keyboard settings.
Re-Boot Your Keyboard Settings
- Go to Settings
- Select General
- Scroll Down and Choose Keyboard
- Slide These Settings OFF
- Auto-Capitalization
- Auto-Correction
- Check Spelling
- Shortcuts
- Predictive
- Wait a few moments
- Now, slide these Setting back ON
- Auto-Capitalization
- Auto-Correction
- Check Spelling
- Shortcuts
- Predictive
Return to Messages or Mail and see if your predictive text is working as expected.
If your problem was spell checker or auto-correction, verify these are working by intentionally misspelling words. See if your iPhone corrects these.
Reset Keyboard Dictionary
One of the easiest ways to control your iPhone’s or other iDevice’s learned misspellings is to reset your keyboard’s dictionary.
To reset your dictionary
- Go to Settings
- Select General
- Head to Reset
- Choose Reset Keyboard Dictionary
Be aware that when resetting your keyboard you are removing any words you’ve added to your iDevice’s user dictionary.
When using your iPhone normally, you add words to the keyboard dictionary by rejecting words your iDevice suggests as you type.
Over time, your iDevice potentially accumulates a lot of words, including any words you frequently misspell. When you tap a word to reject your iPhone’s auto-correction, you add your word to your user dictionary.
So Resetting the keyboard dictionary erases all words you’ve added–the ones you want as well as the ones you don’t.
Has Your iPhone or iPad Learned Misspellings?
If your iPhone or other iDevice learned just a few of your frequently misspelled words, there is a quick way to get your iPhone to “forget” these.
- Go to Settings
- Select General
- Tap Keyboard
- Choose Text Replacement
- Tap the “+” sign
- Add the misspelled word in the phrase field
- Add the correctly spelled word in the shortcut field
Text Replacement
This feature is also a great timesaver.
Create shortcuts for common phrases you frequently use.
Once created, the shortcut automatically expands into the word or phrase you type. Pretty useful!
To create shortcuts for common phrases
- Go to Settings
- Select General
- Tap Keyboard
- Choose Text Replacement
- Tap the “+” sign
- Add your phrase or word in the phrase field
- Add your easy type alternative in the shortcut field
- no spaces allowed, it must be a constant chain of characters
For example, I created the shortcut “2t” for my favorite phrase “let’s get to it!”
All About Your iPhone Emoji Keyboard
If your iPhone emoji keyboard isn’t showing up for you or popping up on words associated with emoji, check that you have an emoji keyboard installed.
Add Your iPhone Emoji Keyboard
- Go to Settings
- Select General
- Choose Keyboard
- Scroll Up and select Keyboards
- Verify that Emoji is listed as a keyboard
- If not, select Add New Keyboard and choose Emoji
- Return to Settings > General > Keyboard
- Verify that Predictive is toggled ON
- If not, toggle Predictive ON
Your iPhone and iDevices need to have the Emoji keyboard downloaded in your Keyboards list to provide emoji options. Check and see if emoji are showing up in Messages now.
Test if your iPhone emoji keyboard is now working
- Open Messages
- Tap on the person you want to text
- Type a message as normal but don’t hit the send arrow
- Long-tap on the Globe icon or smiley face icon to bring up your list of installed keyboards, and choose Emoji
- Tap any orange-highlighted word directly in your text message to turn it into an emoji
- If no highlighted words appear, there aren’t any potential emoji replacement opportunities in your message
- Tap the send arrow when you’re finished
Be aware that some emojis have multiple potential keywords.
For these, a pop-up box appears to choose the particular emoji you want to use.
For example, the word “happy” has multiple options, so just choose the emoji that best represents you!
If emoji still aren’t showing up
- Go to Settings
- Select General
- Choose Keyboard
- Scroll Up and select Keyboards
- If the Emoji Keyboard is listed, choose Edit in Right Upper Corner
- Delete the Emoji Keyboard
- Restart your iPhone or iDevice
- Hold both the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons for 10 seconds until you see the Apple logo
- Return to Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards
- Select Add New Keyboard and choose Emoji
If your iPhone emoji keyboard continues not to show up
Okay, here’s a weird fix but our readers report it works. In Messages, switch to your emoji keyboard and send tons of emojis to yourself in a few messages.
Then switch back to the English keyboard, and the predictive text starts working! Don’t know why this works but it does–go figure. If you have any insight, please let us know in the comments. Thanks!
Quick Emoji keyboard tip
A simple way to get to the predictive slider is to press and long hold the smiley icon or the globe icon near the spacebar. A quick menu appears with options for turning Shortcuts and Predictive ON and OFF.
It’s also the easiest way to switch between multiple keyboards, such as English and Emoji. To turn Predictive or Shortcuts ON or OFF, just toggle it off and on and see if that corrects your problem(s.)
No Time? Look at Our Quick Video Tip
Ever Wonder What Your Sent Emoji Look Like on Android and other Phones (other than iPhone)?
We live in a texting world–nearly everyone these days does some amount of texting from young to old. We also live in a multi-platform world, where iPhones, Androids, Windows, and some rare other phones are texting back in forth at lightning speed.
If you’ve ever texted someone close by with a different type of phone (say your iPhone to their Samsung Android), have you noticed that that the emoji they received don’t exactly look like the emoji you sent?
Emoji look a little different depending on the device, the manufacturer, and of course the operating system.
Go ahead and test it out, send some emoji to a friend or family member with a different brand of phone or operating system. And take a look. What difference do you see between the emoji sent and the emoji received?
Emoji are Variable (somewhat)
So how do you know if the emoji you send will look the same or entirely different to your text recipients?
There is no one answer. It all depends on what device and messaging platform the recipient is using and what emoji font(s) are used on their phones.
But don’t worry, emoji variations are usually quite small–more like interpretations than straight out different. So it’s unlikely that your emoji look entirely different to your Samsung friends. Rather, your emoji look slightly different.
Believe it or not, there’s an organization that standardizes emoji. It’s called the Unicode Consortium and is a nonprofit in Mountain View, California.
This group approves all emojis, including any new emoji. And they mandate that for any new emoji, its designers must maintain the same emoji core shape across platforms.
What that means for us is that messaging apps and smartphone manufacturers have some flexibility in the shaping of emoji. But the core content and shape must be the same across all types of devices and brands.
The Difference is Good and Fun!
It’s fun comparing emoji “notes” with your friends and family and noticing the differences!
You can even make a game out of it, scoring points for who observes the variations for a particular emoji on an iPhone versus a Galaxy. And this isn’t limited to phone manufacturers.
Twitter, Mozilla, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram all have their own emoji language fonts.
Major Emoji Font Makers
- Apple emoji as used on iOS, macOS, and the iMessage app. WhatsApp also uses Apple’s emoji font
- Google for Android interfaces, Google Messages app, Google Hangouts, and Gmail
- Emoji One used for web apps like the Slack, Campfire, and other group chats
- Samsung for devices that include Samsung’s TouchWiz skin
- Facebook for Facebook and Facebook Messages.
- LG used on all LG devices
- Microsoft for Windows, Microsoft Surface, and Windows Phones
Check out Emojipedia to see the differences.
We were admittedly surprised at some of these variations!
The Unicode Consortium also has a bunch of Emoji charts that illustrate the various features of different manufacturers emoji characters in Unicode.
Even look at and learn about the newest emojis coming out in the next months with their emoji candidates charts. See what’s in the emoji pipeline! Who knew such hard work went into developing and maintaining emoji?
Wrapping It Up!
Texting in iOS 10+ is so much better than earlier iOS generations.
Our iPhones and other iDevices are catching up with the rest of the world and creating a genuinely immersive Messaging experience, full of animations, emoji, photos, and even special effects.
So it stinks when our iPhone emoji keyboard doesn’t show up, when our texts are full of spelling mistakes, or when our predictive texts aren’t working.
Hopefully, these tips get you back on track. Just remember that with all these rich texting features, we pay the price in the data our Messages now take up on our phone. Check out this article to make sure you are managing your Messages.