That's the sole reason I don't actually use emoji much myself - it's just annoying. Why would you do this? Because it's more of a pain in the butt to have to keep toggling back and forth between the QWERTY keyboard and the emoji one. Hit save, and voilà - whenever you type that phrase, it will autocorrect into that emoji. On an iPhone, copy your favorite emoji from the emoji keyboard, then go to “Settings,” then “General,” then “Keyboard,” then “Shortcut.” Take the plus sign in the upper right hand corner to add a new shortcut then, when the “Add” menu pops up, type the word you want to autocorrect into the emoji into the “phrase” field and paste the emoji into the “Shortcut” field. We went over this trick back when we talked about the many ways you can get “shruggie,” aka the shrug emoticon, into your life, but just in case you need a reminder, you can actually set your phone to autocorrect a certain word or phrase into an emoji. In any event, though, these eight little hacks will boost your emoji game way, way up. Rooting allows you access to certain system settings, which in turn lets you tinker around with things a bit (although I would stay away from rooting if you're not well-versed in tech - it could go wrong, and then you'd be kind of screwed). If you have an Android, you also may need to root your phone - that is, give yourself root permissions, which Lifehacker describes as being similar to running a program as an administrator in Windows. I'm using the word hack a little loosely here, as has become the custom many of them are more like tips and tricks, rather than actual hacks, although some of them do require a little dedication to carry off. Think of them as Emoji for the Advanced Texter: The 200 level course, as opposed to Emoji 101.

That's where these hacks come in - they'll change up your emoji game for the better. Emoji were originally intended to spice up your text conversations since they've become so commonplace, however, they seem a little less creative now than they once did. It's been a while since we've experimented with some fun tech tricks, so here: On this lovely Friday, I present to you eight emoji hacks you need to know, for the simple reason that there's so much more to life than a yellow smiley or a pair of praise hands.

Can you save skype emojis as favorites