Discover the Joy of Emojis
Sometimes life calls for a little more fun and whimsy. Recently, Bart mentioned an app called Rocket that caught the attention of Mikah Sargent from iMore. Let me tell you, Rocket has quickly become my favorite app. In the wise words of pioneering podcaster Tim Verpoorten, it’s a menubar app with a singular purpose, executed flawlessly.
Embrace the Emoji Craze
All the trendy folks out there are jazzing up their writing with fancy emojis. Sure, I can manage a winky face with a semi-colon, dash, and right parenthesis, but that’s an emoticon, not an emoji. Meanwhile, my neighbor Rick is throwing in martini glasses, party hats, and even sailboats into his messages. I wanted to inject some of that joy into my own writing.
Bring Emoji Joy to Your Mac
On iOS, the keyboard automatically suggests emojis as you type relevant words. It’s a feature I rely on and it never fails to bring a smile to my face. However, on my Mac, where I do most of my typing, I longed for the same convenience. That’s where Rocket comes in. It’s a freemium menubar app from matthewpalmer.net/… that effortlessly allows you to insert emojis wherever you can type.
Simple Steps to Express Yourself
Once Rocket is installed, all you need to do is type a colon followed by the word you want to represent. For example, type “:” and “rocket” to choose among a female astronaut 👩🏼🚀, a male astronaut 👨🏼🚀 (who bears a striking resemblance to Commander Hatfield, depending on your operating system and browser), or a rocket 🚀. Granted, my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, so I might need to zoom in to distinguish them, but isn’t that cool?
Embrace Inclusivity
What’s fantastic about emojis is their increasing inclusivity. Rocket allows you to select your preferred skin color in the Preferences pane, eliminating the need to choose it every time you insert an emoji. Moreover, you can also disable Rocket in specific apps. It’s built into popular apps like Slack, HipChat, and Terminal, where emojis are either already available or not desired.
Customization and More
Despite its simplicity, Rocket surprisingly offers various customization options. You can set Rocket to start at login, and if you prefer a different trigger key instead of the colon, options like left parentheses or plus could work better. Matthew, the developer, suggests colon as the default, and I tend to agree.
Once you’re hooked on emojis, you’ll realize there’s a vast collection you’re missing out on. For instance, typing “:martini” won’t bring up that martini glass Rick keeps sending me. Thankfully, for a mere $5 investment, you can unlock the full potential of Rocket. Not only will you gain access to a comprehensive emoji search, but you’ll also enjoy shortcuts, descriptions, GIFs, and stickers. Life is just not silly enough without them. Oh, and they even throw in multi-emoji shortcuts for good measure.
Level Up with Rocket Pro
Being the team player that I am, I decided to go pro on Rocket by paying the $4.99 fee. Now, I can effortlessly type 🎻 and 🍸 just like the cool kids! I’ve even set up my own shortcut combo—typing colon followed by four asterisks gives me 🍸🍹! I bet you’re impressed with my newfound skills.
As promised, after splurging on the full version, I received an email with a link to download custom GIFs. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of animated GIFs. While they can be clever, I find them distractive in chat windows as they move in my peripheral vision. That’s precisely why I love using Telegram, where I can delete animated GIFs without the sender ever knowing. Nevertheless, I downloaded the 150 animated GIFs that Rocket had to offer.
For your $4.99, you’ll also gain insights into your emoji usage. Discover which emojis you use the most and which ones remain unexplored. So far, I’ve used a whopping 20 different emojis, which means I haven’t even scratched the surface of what Rocket has to offer. Brace yourself, world, because I’m about to become annoyingly expressive!
Join the Emoji Movement
If you, too, desire an effortless way to stay hip with the coolest kids around, look no further than Rocket App from matthewpalmer.net/…
