Send a single emoji with nothing around it and it arrives large and moving. Tap some of them and the animation fills the screen — for both people at once, if you are both looking.
It is a small piece of theatre with a real point: an emoji on its own is a message, and Telegram treats it as one instead of as a character at the end of a sentence.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Send an emoji as a message rather than as punctuation.
- check_circle Trigger the full-screen effects, and know which emoji have them.
- check_circle Tell animated emoji apart from custom emoji, which are a different thing.
- check_circle Turn the movement off if it is not for you.
The full-screen effect plays for both people when both have the chat open — that synchronisation is the whole idea.
animation Alone means something different
Telegram looks at whether an emoji is the entire message. Inside a sentence it is a character, sized to the text. On its own it becomes the message: drawn large, and animated if an animation exists for it.
The animations are vector drawings rather than video, which is why they are tiny, arrive instantly and stay sharp at any size. Some of them have a second layer — tapping the received emoji plays an effect across the whole screen, and if the other person has the chat open at that moment they see it too.
Not every emoji has one. There is no list to memorise: send one alone and either it moves or it does not.
Four small behaviours worth knowing
All of them are about what happens when an emoji is not part of a sentence.
emoji_emotions One emoji, no text
touch_app The full-screen effects
search Getting to the one you want
visibility_off If the movement is a problem
The rule underneath all of it: an emoji alone is a message, an emoji in a sentence is a character.
settings Trying it
- Send one emoji with no text Any chat. It arrives large.
- Tap a received one If it has an effect, it plays across the screen.
- Search the emoji panel by word Faster than the category rows.
- Adjust the animation settings if you want Chat settings, where the looping and large-emoji controls are.
- Consider a reaction instead For agreeing with something, a reaction says the same thing without a new message.
This page is what happens when an emoji stands alone. The curriculum step covers how a message is composed generally: text with styles and inline objects, what custom emoji are underneath, and what survives when a message is copied or forwarded.
At a glance
- 1Emoji as a message
Send a single emoji to see it animate.
- 2Full-screen effects
Some animated emoji play an effect when tapped.
- 3Custom emoji differ
Custom emoji need Premium; animated standard ones do not.
Updated
