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Kaomoji
Japanese-style text faces built from characters, sorted by mood. Each card copies the whole face.
Kaomoji to copy
Happy 18
Love & hugs 7
Sad, shy & surprised 9
Classics & action 16
Ready-made combos 3
Nothing here matches “”.
What kaomoji are
Kaomoji (顔文字, “face characters”) started on Japanese message boards in the 1980s and 90s. Unlike sideways Western emoticons like :-), they’re read upright: (＾▽＾). They’re assembled from many scripts — Japanese, Greek, Kannada and Canadian Aboriginal syllabics — which is why they look so expressive.
Because a kaomoji is several characters, it can break across lines. Paste it where it has room, or at the end of a sentence.
- Pick a moodUse the chips to filter by feeling.
- Copy the whole faceOne tap copies every character, including the tricky ones.
- Watch for markdownIn Discord and Reddit, the shrug’s backslash can vanish — see the note.
The disappearing arm: in apps that use Markdown (Discord, Reddit), \_ is treated as formatting, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ can lose an arm. Add an extra backslash: ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯.
Screen readers read kaomoji character by character (“left parenthesis, fullwidth circumflex…”). In important messages, add a word like “(shrug)”.
Questions, answered
What is the difference between kaomoji and emoji?
Emoji are single pictures drawn by your phone. Kaomoji are made from several ordinary characters, so they look similar everywhere.
Why does part of my kaomoji show as a box?
A character in it isn’t in your device’s fonts. Faces using ᴥ or ʖ are widely supported; rarer scripts may not be.
How do I type the shrug in Discord?
Discord has a /shrug command that adds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ for you, or copy it from here and add a backslash before the underscore.