What Is the Collection Builder?
The Collection Builder is an interactive tool on EmojiFYI that lets you hand-pick emojis, organize them into themed sets, and export the result in multiple formats. Think of it as a playlist maker, but for emojis ๐ต.
Instead of hunting across dozens of apps and keyboard menus to remember which emojiEmoji
A Japanese word (็ตตๆๅญ) meaning 'picture character' โ small graphical symbols used in digital communication to express ideas, emotions, and objects. you wanted, the Collection Builder gives you a single place to search, browse, arrange, and save groups of emojis that work together. Whether you're a social media manager putting together a content kit, a team lead standardizing how your Slack channels communicate, or a designer building presentation assets, the tool is built to make the process fast and repeatable.
Collections live in your browser session, and you can export them at any point โ no account required.
Why Build Emoji Collections?
Using emojis ad hoc is fine for casual texting. But for anything with a repeating pattern โ posting on brand, running a team channel, or producing slide decks โ having a pre-defined set saves real time and keeps things consistent.
Social Media Branding
Brands that use emojis on Instagram, X, or LinkedIn tend to stick to a small, recognizable palette. If your brand voice is warm and optimistic, you probably reach for ๐ โจ ๐ more than ๐ ๐ฅ. Building a dedicated collection for your brand means any team member writing a caption can grab from the same set, keeping the visual tone consistent across posts.
A curated collection also speeds up content creation. Instead of scrolling through hundreds of options each time, your "Brand Voice Pack" is already waiting with exactly the emojis that fit.
Team Communication Standards
Remote and hybrid teams often develop informal emoji conventions โ a โ for task complete, a ๐ for shipped features, a ๐ด for blockers. But these norms are usually invisible and inconsistently applied.
Building a shared collection and sharing it via URL (more on that below) gives new team members an immediate reference for how the team communicates. It also reduces the awkward ambiguity of someone using ๐ when they mean something entirely different than you assumed.
Presentation and Design Assets
Emoji are increasingly used in slide decks, dashboards, and design mockups as lightweight icons. A presentation on quarterly growth might use ๐ ๐ฏ ๐ก as consistent visual anchors throughout. Building that set in advance โ and exporting it in a format your design tool can use โ cuts the friction of hunting mid-slide.
How to Build a Collection
Open the Collection Builder and you'll find an empty canvas on the right and a search and browse interface on the left. Building a collection takes about three steps.
Search and Add Emojis
Type any keyword into the search box โ "fire," "heart," "star," "money," whatever fits your theme โ and matching emojis appear instantly. Click any result to add it to your collection. The search uses CLDRCLDR (CLDR)
The Common Locale Data Repository, a Unicode project providing locale-specific data including emoji names and search keywords in 100+ languages. keyword data, so it understands synonyms and related terms, not just exact names.
If you already know the emoji you want, you can also paste the emoji character directly into the search field. The tool will recognize it and add it.
Browse by Category
Not sure what you're looking for? Browsing by category is often more inspiring than searching. The left panel lets you filter by the standard UnicodeUnicode
Universal character encoding standard that assigns a unique number to every character across all writing systems and symbol sets, including emoji. categories โ Smileys & Emotion, People & Body, Animals & Nature, Food & Drink, Travel & Places, Activities, Objects, Symbols, and Flags. Scroll through, spot something useful, click to add it.
Category browsing works especially well for themed collections. Building a food review set? Drop into the Food & Drink category and work your way through. Building a travel pack? Head to Travel & Places.
Drag to Reorder
Once emojis are in your collection, you can drag them into any order. The first few emojis in a string can set the tone of the whole sequence. Drag your most recognizable or anchor emoji to the front, then arrange supporting emojis behind it. The final order is what gets copied or exported.
Export Options
Once your collection is ready, the Builder offers three ways to get it out of the tool and into wherever you need it.
Copy as Emoji String
The most common option. Copies the entire collection as a plain sequence of emoji characters โ ๐โ ๐ก๐ด โ that you can paste into Slack, Twitter, a Google Doc, a code comment, or anywhere else text goes. The emojis copy with no spaces between them by default, which is the standard format for inline emoji use.
Export as JSON Array
For developers and power users, the JSON export gives you an array of objects with each emoji's character, Unicode codepoint, name, and category. This format plugs directly into apps, configuration files, or any system that consumes structured data. If you're building a custom emoji picker for an internal tool or populating a config file, this is the format you want.
[
{ "emoji": "๐", "name": "rocket", "codepoint": "U+1F680", "category": "Travel & Places" },
{ "emoji": "โ
", "name": "check mark button", "codepoint": "U+2705", "category": "Symbols" }
]
Share via URL
The Collection Builder encodes your selected emojis into a shareable URL. Send the link to a teammate and they'll open the same collection in their browser, ready to use or extend. This is the simplest way to distribute a team emoji kit โ paste the URL into a Notion page, a Slack message, or a team wiki and anyone who clicks it gets the set.
Collection Ideas
Need inspiration? Here are a few concrete collection ideas to get started.
Holiday Season Pack
A seasonal collection for November and December content: ๐ ๐ โญ ๐ฆ โ๏ธ ๐ ๐งฆ ๐ฏ๏ธ ๐ฅ ๐. Useful for social media managers who need to pivot quickly to seasonal content without hunting for the right winter emojis every time.
Developer Status Emojis
A team communication kit for engineering channels: โ ๐ง ๐ด ๐ ๐ ๐ก ๐ฅ ๐ ๐ โ๏ธ. Each emoji signals a different status at a glance โ shipped, in progress, blocked, on fire (the good kind or the bad kind, depending on context ๐ ).
Food Review Reactions
A reaction set for a food blog or restaurant review platform: ๐ ๐คค ๐ ๐ฝ๏ธ โญ ๐ฅ ๐ฌ ๐คข. From "this was transcendent" to "I would not recommend," a small set of reactions gives readers a quick, expressive vocabulary.
Fitness and Health Tracker
For fitness apps, wellness newsletters, or gym community channels: ๐ช ๐ ๐ง ๐ฅ ๐ง โค๏ธ ๐ฅ โฑ๏ธ ๐ ๐. A consistent set makes progress updates and challenge posts feel cohesive.
Tips for Curation
A great emoji collection isn't just a long list โ it's a focused, usable set.
Keep It Focused (10-30 Emojis)
There's a sweet spot between too few and too many. Under 10 emojis and the collection feels too narrow to be useful. Over 30 and it becomes hard to remember what's in there โ you're back to hunting. The 10-to-30 range is enough variety to cover most situations in a given context without overwhelming the person using it.
Mix Categories for Variety
The most versatile collections pull from at least two or three categories. A pure "faces only" collection gets monotonous. Mix in an object or symbol emoji and you add range โ a ๐ก next to a ๐ฎ tells a different story than either alone.
Test Across Platforms
Emoji rendering varies between Apple, Google, Samsung, and other platforms. An emoji that looks great on iOS might look slightly different on Android, and occasionally the difference is meaningful. Before finalizing a collection for professional use, check how your key emojis render on the platforms your audience uses most. The Emoji Keyboard tool makes it easy to inspect individual emojis, and the compare tool lets you view platform differences side by side.
Related Tools
The Collection Builder is one of several interactive tools on EmojiFYI designed to make working with emojis more efficient.
The Emoji Keyboard is the fastest way to find and copy individual emojis โ it works like a full-screen keyboard with search and category filters. If you need a single emoji quickly, the keyboard is the right tool. If you're building a repeatable set to use across many contexts, start with the Collection Builder.
Together, these tools cover the two most common emoji workflows: finding one emoji right now, and building a set to use again and again.