The Telegram Emoji Keyboard: Emoji, Stickers and GIF Tabs

One button, three tabs

Telegram keeps emoji, stickers and GIFs in one emoji panel that replaces your phone's keyboard while it is open. The button that opens it sits at the left of the message field on Android; its label for screen readers says exactly what it holds: Emoji, stickers, and GIFs. Tap it again, now showing a keyboard icon, to get the keyboard back.

Tab	What you send	Shows up as
Emoji	Symbols inside your text	Part of your message, next to your words
Stickers	A picture from a sticker set you added	A message of its own, larger, with no bubble
GIFs	A short silent loop	A message of its own that plays automatically

The switch at the bottom of the panel moves between Emoji, GIFs and Stickers.

On a computer, the Emoji Panel button is at the right of the message field; hovering over it opens the panel and moving the pointer away closes it. On iPhone the button sits at the right of the message field and opens on stickers; the regular emoji are also on the iPhone's own emoji keyboard.

Finding the right one fast

• Recently Used collects what you send most, at the top of the Emoji tab. After a few days it holds most of what you need.
• Search takes a word, such as "thanks" or "coffee", and matches emoji and stickers tagged with it. The icons beside the search box are ready-made categories: love, approval, disapproval, celebration and so on.
• The row along the top holds your emoji and sticker sets. Tap one to jump to it.
• Typing an emoji in the message field makes Telegram suggest stickers tagged with that emoji, above the field. It is often quicker than opening the panel at all.

Searching emoji by keyword and searching for GIFs go further into each search.

The Stickers tab

The Stickers tab shows the sets you have added, with the same kind of search at the top. Trending sets appear there too, so you can try one before adding it.

Press and hold a sticker to see it larger before sending, or to add it to your favourites so it stays near the top. To add a whole set you saw in a chat, tap the sticker in that chat; adding a sticker pack from a chat shows the steps. A sticker is sent the moment you tap it, so in a quiet or formal chat, the hold-to-preview habit avoids accidents.

Emoji sets that need Premium

The Emoji tab also offers animated sets beyond the standard emoji, shown along the top row and under Trending Emoji Packs. These are custom emoji. Anyone can see them in a message, but putting them in your own messages requires Telegram Premium. Without it you can look through them, but not send them.

One exception: in Saved Messages, your chat with yourself, a free account can use them. Everywhere else the tap only shows the notice above.

GIFs: a word of caution

The GIFs tab shows trending clips and lets you search by word. The results come from outside Telegram and include clips of real people from films and TV. They are fine for a laugh among friends; in work chats, look at the clip before you tap, because a GIF, like a sticker, is sent on the first tap.

Next step: when to send a round video message.