Did you know you can still use Android's cute yellow blob emoji?

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority

The blob emoji themes are very popular in the android community. The cute bubbly yellow faces invaded our screens many years ago, stole our hearts and then disappeared somewhere around 2017. Still, five years later, I wish more than anyone for a genderless, skintoneless, thumb-shaped blob of modern realistic emoji. I have too much reality in my life thank you so much I don't need a smiley to send my boyfriend to be an exact replica of my face, eyes, mouth, nose, teeth and hair.

But I digress. We're not here to debate the veracity of modern Android emoji. Instead, we're going to talk about how to bring back the blobs for another glorious run.

First you need Gboard

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority

There may be various hacky ways to get the blob magic back, but the simplest and most straightforward is Gboard. Google's official keyboard offers two ways to access Blobs, so you should run it as your default keyboard.

If you're using a Pixel, Gboard is already installed on your phone and it's the default keyboard (unless you've changed it). You don't have to do anything.

Other brand Android device users should download and launch Gboard (Play Store). When you do this, you'll get a popup asking if you want to make it the default keyboard. For the purposes of this article, you should. But also know that Gboard is one of the best keyboards for Android and iOS in my opinion. It's fast, packed with useful features, and has blobs. What more can you ask for?

Continue reading: New emoji are coming but I just want the blobs back

Emoji Blob Sticker Packs

With Gboard installed, tap emoji button and look for the sticker Tab - it's the middle one below. Next select the + on the top left of the keyboard and scroll down until you see these two sticker packs: "The Blobs Live On" and "Long Live the Blob". You will immediately recognize the familiar yellow heads.

Choose Add to. These two packages are now in the top row of Gboard. You can open each pack and select something to send in your chats. Best of all, these blobs are animated, so they'll be shared as a GIF in supported apps. The bad part is that there are only 24 stickers per pack so your choices are pretty limited.

If you'd rather skip the whole business of adding packs, you can also use the search function on the main sticker tab (top left of the keyboard) to search for what you want. For example, typing "Angry Blob" will show you all the stickers that match that description.

Related: How to create your own stickers in WhatsApp

Emoji Blob Mashups

This other method uses Gboard's built-in Emoji Kitchen feature, which creates combinations of two emojis. Say you type angry face and then cold face, you will get a cold angry emoji.

The "Kitchen" has received many updates since its inception, and one of them includes using the ✨ or 🪄 emoji in combination with others to create blob mashups.

To trigger this you need to make sure you go Gboard Settings > Emojis, Stickers & GIFs and enable Emoji Stickers at the bottom.

Now if you type ✨ or 🪄 and then follow another emoji (smiley face, animal, some food) you will get the blob version. Yeah, like a fairy dusted some magic on it and turned it into a cute lumpy thing.

Take the Turtle Blob or Cheesy Blob above, for example. They are exquisite examples of what you can do and all the weird and fun combinations you can try.

Next generation blob restrictions

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority

Both blob methods are based on stickers, not emojis. Unfortunately, that means you can't put them in the middle of a normal-size sentence. No, they are huge stickers and they are sent that way. Because of this, they disrupt the conversation, but one could also argue that they look better and convey more emotion by taking up such a large part of the screen.

Also, stickers are not supported in all apps like emojis are. You can only send them in Messenger or social network apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Still, I'd like to think that there's a special place for blobs in Google's cold heart, and they'll somehow remain available no matter how much Android grows and evolves.

By: Did you know you can still use Android's cute yellow blob emoji?