Emoji Kitchen: What It Is and How to Use It on Any Device

Emoji Kitchen is Google’s official emoji mashup tool that lets you combine two emojis into a single hand-crafted sticker. It launched in early 2020 as part of the Gboard keyboard app on Android, and since September 2023 it has been accessible through Google Search on any device — Android, iPhone, Windows PC, or Mac — for free.

What Is Emoji Kitchen?

Emoji Kitchen takes two standard emojis and merges them into a new sticker built around Google’s own emoji art style. Pick a smiling face and a ghost, and you get a single image that blends both characters together. The results are playful, expressive, and genuinely distinct from the original emojis — which is part of what makes the feature popular in messaging apps.

Google introduced Emoji Kitchen in early 2020 as a Gboard-exclusive feature for Android. For its first few years, iPhone and desktop users simply couldn’t access it. That changed in September 2023 when Google rolled Emoji Kitchen into its standard Search results, making it reachable from any browser on any platform.

One important clarification before going further: there is a third-party app on the Google Play Store also named “Emoji Kitchen.” It is not affiliated with Google in any way. User reviews have flagged it as unreliable. Stick to the two official methods — Gboard on Android or Google Search in any browser — covered in detail below.

How to Use Emoji Kitchen on Android via Gboard

Android users get the most integrated experience through Gboard, Google’s default keyboard app. If Gboard is already your active keyboard, you’re set. Here’s how to use it:

1. Open any app where you can type — Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram, or similar.
2. Tap the text input field to bring up Gboard.
3. Tap the emoji icon on the keyboard to open the emoji panel.
4. Tap any emoji. A row of suggested Emoji Kitchen mashups will appear above the emoji grid.
5. Tap a second emoji to mix it with the first. The generated sticker appears as a result.
6. Tap the sticker to send it directly, or long-press to copy it to your clipboard and paste it elsewhere.

If you select a pair that doesn’t have a pre-made combination, Gboard shows a ghost graphic with the message “Nothing to see here.” That just means that specific pairing hasn’t been crafted yet — try swapping one of the emojis and the suggestions will update immediately.

Once copied to your clipboard, a sticker is just an image file. You can paste it into any app that accepts image pastes, not only messaging apps.

How to Use Emoji Kitchen on iPhone, PC, and Mac via Google Search

Since September 2023, you don’t need Gboard or Android at all. Emoji Kitchen is built directly into Google Search, so iPhone, iPad, Windows, and macOS users can access it through any browser — Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, or otherwise.

1. Open a browser and go to Google Search.
2. Search for emoji kitchen.
3. In the search results, find the Emoji Kitchen widget and click or tap “Get cooking.”
4. Select your first emoji from the panel that appears.
5. Select a second emoji to generate the mashup sticker.
6. Copy the resulting sticker to your clipboard, then paste it into any compatible app or document.

The browser-based version works the same way as Gboard under the hood — you’re choosing from the same library of hand-crafted combinations, and the same “Nothing to see here” ghost appears if a pair has no available result. On mobile browsers, pasting an image into certain apps can be slightly less smooth than doing it natively through Gboard, but it works.

How Many Emoji Combinations Does Emoji Kitchen Have?

As of a 2022 count, Google designers had hand-crafted over 15,000 different emoji combinations. Google has continued expanding Emoji Kitchen through subsequent Gboard updates, so the actual current total is likely higher — but the 15,000+ figure gives a reasonable sense of the scale.

The key word is hand-crafted. Every mashup sticker was drawn by Google’s designers, not generated on the fly by an AI model. That’s why the results have a consistent, polished look rather than the awkward artifacts you’d expect from automated image blending. It also explains why not every possible emoji pair has a result — creating each combination takes real artistic work, so coverage is selective and continues to grow with updates.

One detail worth knowing: typing the same emoji twice in a row often produces an exaggerated “doubled-up” version of that emoji’s Google design — bigger, bolder, or more expressive than the original. It’s one of the quicker ways to find a surprising result without guessing at random pairs.

When a combination doesn’t exist yet, the ghost-with-text response (“Nothing to see here”) is Emoji Kitchen’s way of being upfront about a gap in the library rather than serving a broken or low-quality result.

Where Can You Share Emoji Kitchen Stickers?

Because Emoji Kitchen stickers are copied to your clipboard as image files, they work anywhere that accepts image pastes. Compatible apps include Gmail, Google Messages, Messenger, Snapchat, Telegram, and WhatsApp. In practice, most modern messaging and social apps handle clipboard images without issue.

If an app doesn’t accept direct image pastes from the clipboard, you can usually save the sticker to your device’s photo library first and then attach it as you would any other image. The sticker is a standard image format, so there’s no proprietary lock-in to Google’s ecosystem once you’ve copied it.

Official Emoji Kitchen vs. the Third-Party App: What to Watch Out For

Searching “Emoji Kitchen” on the Google Play Store surfaces a third-party app — package name com.emojikitchen.emojimixer — that shares the name but has no connection to Google. It is not part of Gboard, it is not an official Google product, and user reviews have consistently flagged it as unreliable.

The real Emoji Kitchen requires no separate app download beyond Gboard (which is already the default keyboard on most Android devices) and is completely free with no sign-up. On iPhone, Windows, or Mac, you access it through a Google Search — no extra install needed.

If you’ve already downloaded that third-party app expecting the official Google feature, uninstall it and use one of the two legitimate methods instead: Gboard on Android or Google Search on any device. Both are free, both give you access to the full library of 15,000+ combinations, and neither requires handing over permissions to an unaffiliated third-party app.