Apparently, it’s World Emoji Day, and while that probably doesn’t mean much for most of us, for Google it means the return of what many consider to be the rightful emoji on Android — the blob emoji, or blobmoji.
For the uninitiated, blobmoji were basically the default emoji on Android for a number of years, before Google replaced them with more standard emoji last year. While the switch was largely aimed at keeping emoji a little more uniform across platforms, many still considered it an unwelcome change. Now, however, it looks like users once again have access to blobmoji, if they want it.
Technically, blobmoji were still available inside of Allo, Google’s now-fading messaging service that debuted in 2016. But most people don’t use Allo, and Google’s has even shifted development of the service to Android Messages, so it’s possible Allo will be depreciated entirely at some point.
But now there is a new way to access blobmoji, and that is through sticker packs in Gboard, Google’s mobile keyboard. According to The Verge, they will be coming to Android Messages too. Now, bringing blobmoji back in sticker packs isn’t quite as useful as returning them to their system-wide status, but it’s at least a consolation for long-time Android fans that have been missing blobmoji over the last year or so.
If you’re interested in getting the blobmoji sticker pack for yourself, you can do so straight from Gboard by downloading blobmoji as an add-on. The sticker pack doesn’t seem to have made its way to Android Messages just yet, but it will likely do so in the near future. There are a few other ways to get blobmoji on Android, but most of them are user-side only — meaning that when you send a blobmoji, only you will actually see it as a blobmoji, and the recipient will see it converted into a standard emoji.
There are other ways to check out blobmoji if you don’t want to download them as sticker packs. For example, you can check out the entire pack of blobmoji over at emojipedia.org, If you’re on iOS, you can even download an iMessage sticker pack — in case you’ve always felt left out of the magic of blobmoji as an iPhone user.
