5 top free emoji keyboard apps

If we're not at peak emoji yet as a society, it feels like we definitely should be. The emoji concept has gone far beyond what anyone in Japan could have envisioned when the people there unleashed it on an unsuspecting world, but the West has taken it and just kept running over the past few years.

(Whereas the Japanese now have apparently disowned them.)

There's money in them there emojis though, especially when it comes to emoji apps. People just can't seem to get enough of them, and while a series of those apps have rotated through the top of the App Store charts over time, the latest one to create a buzz means it's a fine time to consider five that are popular right now. And we'll start with one that's very popular indeed ...

Bitmoji Keyboard takes things to the next level, if that's possible. Because not only does it feature all the emojis you can shake a keyboard at, it also allows you to create an animated, cartoon-style avatar to appear in those emojis. Naturally, you can also use your avatar in Snapchat, which all the cool kids are doing -- or they were until I just typed that.

How can you stand out from the emoji crowd? By chopping the 'e' off the word, I guess. In any case, there's absolutely no excuse for not getting your custom emoji face just the way you want it with this app, which offers 1500 attributes and numerous other ways to tweak backgrounds and the like. Seriously, no excuse.

Swiftmoji claims that it "helps you reach your true emoji potential," something I didn't even realize was an issue for most of us considering how many emojis we use in daily life. What this app does is match the perfect emoji to something you just typed, thus saving you the trouble of hunting it down. And jokes aside, that really does sound like it would come in handy at times.

You'd be surprised at how similar the names of several apps are to this one. Or maybe you wouldn't, given exactly what we're discussing here. Anyway, this app has plenty of emojis to help express whatever it is you need to, and the 'adult' part isn't as risque as you might think. That could be good or bad, depending.

Unless you have a perfectly round head and bright yellow skin -- which might mean that as the guy told the Hulk in The Avengers, you've got a condition -- chances are that you can't find an emoji that looks exactly like you. With this app, you can, because it helps turn your face into an emoji. That's all any of us really want, right? Right? Hey, why are you walking away?