emoji keyboard Archives

AppWizard

June 25, 2025

How to create custom AI stickers on a Google Pixel phone

Google has introduced the Pixel Studio app for the Pixel 9 series, allowing users to access custom AI-generated images and stickers. The custom AI stickers feature was launched with the June 2025 Pixel Feature Drop and is exclusive to the Google Pixel 9 series, including the Pixel 9, Pixel 9a, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Pixel 9 Pro Fold. This functionality is available for devices set to English, Japanese, or German. Users must update to Android 16 and may need to update Gboard and Pixel Studio via the Google Play Store to access the feature. To create custom AI stickers, users can open the keyboard in any app, tap the emoji symbol, press the AI sticker button, and follow the prompts to generate and save their stickers. Custom AI stickers cannot depict anything resembling a person. The base-model Google Pixel 9 supports the latest AI innovations, including custom AI stickers.

Winsage

June 6, 2025

This app has been shipping with Windows for decades, and it needs to go away

The Character Map is a tool in Windows designed to help users access uncommon characters and symbols not available on the keyboard. However, it is considered convoluted and unnecessary due to its complicated access process and cumbersome selection method. Microsoft has introduced a more efficient emoji keyboard in Windows 11, which allows users to quickly select symbols by pressing Windows + . (period) and is more user-friendly than the Character Map. The emoji panel saves the last twelve used symbols for easy access. It is suggested that the Character Map would be better suited as a feature within Microsoft Office, where symbol selection is more relevant. The Character Map is viewed as one of several outdated features in Windows 11 that may need removal to improve the user experience.