List of emoji substitutions for Messages in Mac OS X

I use the Messages application a lot on my Mac Book Pro. It is lovely! Since most of my friends uses iMessage I could send messages directly to them on their phones.

I use emojis a lot. I know some substitutions for popular emojis like :) gives me a smiley. However I want to be able to use substitutions for all the emojis. I find it disturbing to use the drop-down menu for inserting an emoji. This forces me to switch from the keyboard to the mouse/touchpad way to often :/

Is there a complete list of all emoji substitutions used in the Messages app?

Solution 1:

You can define your own ones for emojis that are not pre-defined.

Open System Preferences > Keyboard and then navigate to the Text tab.

1. Click on the Plus Symbol on the left bottom corner
2. Type the text you want to replace with a emoji into the left field
3. Double Click on the right field
4. Go to the menu and click on Edit > Special Characters ...
5. There you can add your favourite emoij (or even more than one)

It's not a real shortcut solution, but a workaround when you want to use emojis a lot.

Solution 2:

This list is based off of the old iChat plist and scripting the list of emoticons from Wikipedia into Messages.app:

😊 :)
😉 ;)
😟 :(
😎 B)  
😃 :D  
😩 D:
😋 :d
😜 ;p
😛 :p
😮 :o
😖 :s
😶 :x
😐 :|
😕 :/
😳 :[
😏 :> 
😷 :@  
😘 :*
😬 :!
😇 o:)
😠 >:-o
😈 >:-)
😺 :3  
👍 (y)
👎 (n)
❤️ <3

Note most support using - for a nose so :-) works for 😊 as well.