Apple Is Giving the iPhone Its Own ‘Emoji Kitchen’

Once you’re running iOS 26, open the emoji keyboard, then tap “Genmoji.” Here, you’ll now see a new “Suggestions” section, which offers a row of emojis you can choose from. If you don’t like these suggestions, you can choose “Show More” to see different categories of emojis, including “Themes,” “Expressions,” “Costumes,” “Accessories,” and “Places.” As Emojipedia highlights, these categories feature icons that aren’t standard emojis, like a race car helmet and flower crown.

If you’re looking to mix specific emojis together, however, just tap the gray “smiley +” icon. This button will open the emoji keyboard, so you can choose whatever options you like, in addition to any text-based prompts you’d like to add. You can add up to six “concepts” (emojis and prompts) per generation, so you can really mix things up—though you might find that using fewer prompts returns results closer to your intended design.

From here, Genmoji will start generating new emojis from your selection, and you can scroll through the different options it presents. While the app hides the emojis and prompts here, you can tap the image to see which concepts it was generated from. If you like a generation, tap the checkmark, and Genmoji will automatically enter it into the text field for you to share.