I’ve talked before about how it can be challenging to quickly and effectively use Emoji on the iPhone. It doesn’t help that the stock iOS Emoji keyboard is really kludgey and sorts things in really odd ways.

My dear friend _David Smith has solved this problem. Today he introduced Emoji++ (App Store link). It’s $0.99, and if you’re serious about Emoji like I am, it’s well worth it. You’d be nuts not to, in fact.

The best way to sum up Emoji++ is to show you the GIF that Dave created:

As with all of _David’s apps, Emoji++ is simple, but hugely effective. Some advantages:

• Rather than pages, all Emoji are in a single scrolling list. The “jump bar” allows you to jump to the right section immediately, or even swipe vertically between sections.
• The categories highlighted in the jump bar actually make a lot of sense.
• The Emoji are larger and much easier to see
• You can see recently used Emoji easily (as marked by the 🕘 Emoji, naturally)
• You can long-press to invest in a list of curated favorite Emoji (as marked by the ❤️ Emoji, obviously)
• There is no request for expanded access

I’ve beta tested Emoji++, and it’s wonderful. If you care even the smallest bit about professional Emoji usage, you should go to the app store right now.