Qu'est-ce que le kaomoji ?
Kaomoji (顔文字) — literally "face characters" in Japanese — are emoticons built from Unicode letters, punctuation, brackets and diacritics. Unlike the colourful bitmap emojis on your phone keyboard, a kaomoji is just plain text: the entire face exists between the opening and closing bracket, and every pair of eyes, mouth, blush mark or sweat drop is a real character anyone can copy, paste or type. That is why kaomoji feel so legible across every chat app, forum, game, code comment and terminal — the medium does not need emoji fonts or colour.
Classic Western ASCII emoticons (like :-) or ;-) ) are read sideways; kaomoji are read upright. A face such as (ᵔ◡ᵔ) already shows two eyes and a smile without rotating your head, which is why they spread so quickly from Japanese bulletin boards into chat rooms, Twitter, Discord and Twitch.
Une brève histoire du kaomoji
Le premier kaomoji largement reconnu est
(^_^),
attributed to a 1986 post by Yasushi Wakabayashi on the Japanese bulletin board ASCII NET. Western users at the same time were happily typing
:)
sideways — but Japanese keyboards, and Japanese multi-byte encodings like Shift-JIS, gave users an enormous palette of full-width brackets, kana and symbols. Over the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japanese forum culture (2channel and its descendants especially) turned this palette into a folk art: thousands of face variations, each with a subtly different emotion.
À la fin des années 1990, le flip de table (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ et le haussement d'épaules ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ had crossed into English-language internet culture. The shrug in particular became so iconic that it was featured as a reaction on Slack, Discord, macOS text replacement and countless meme templates. Today kaomoji coexist with Unicode emojis, but they fill a different niche — ironic, text-first, sometimes ASCII-pure, sometimes absurdly elaborate.
Kaomoji vs. emoji vs. émoticône
- Émoticône — un visage de côté composé de quelques signes de ponctuation ASCII:
:-),;-P,:<. - Kaomoji — un visage en texte vertical utilisant des caractères de style japonais :un visage en texte vertical utilisant des caractères de style japonais :une face textuelle droite utilisant des caractères de style japonais : (。◕‿◕。), (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻.
- Emoji — a picture character encoded in Unicode, rendered as a colour glyph by the operating system: 😀 🎉 🌸.
All three are "pictographic communication", but only emoji require an emoji-aware font. Kaomoji work everywhere text works — including places emoji notoriously break, like terminals, old web forms, LaTeX documents, git commit messages and monospaced code editors.
Comment les kaomoji sont construits
La plupart des kaomoji suivent un schéma simple :
[left bracket][left cheek/hand][left eye][mouth][right eye][right cheek/hand][right bracket].
Swapping a single component changes the emotion dramatically — the same brackets plus different eyes gives you happy, crying, angry, sleepy or confused. That modularity is exactly why there are so many variations, and why kaomoji lend themselves to being browsed by mood, action or character type.
Composants de base courants
- Yeux:
◕ ◕,•́ •̀,╥ ╥,◉ ◉,ಠ ಠ,⌒ ⌒,T T,> < - Bouches:
‿,ω,□,皿,▽,益,〰 - Joues / rougeurs:
。,⁎,✿,* - Mains / bras:
ヽ,ノ,╯,╰,╭,ʕ,ʔ - Larmes / sueur / effets:
;,T_T,˃̣̣̥,つ,~~,♡,★
Once you know these parts, you can read any kaomoji at a glance and even remix your own. That is the real reward of browsing a kaomoji library: you stop copying and start composing.
Pourquoi les gens utilisent encore des kaomoji en 2026
- Fiabilité multiplateforme — kaomoji render identically on any device with a basic Unicode font, from ancient IRC clients to modern Slack. No missing-glyph box, no platform-specific yellow face.
- Ton et ironie — a shrug or a flipped table carries a specific kind of deadpan humour that a full-colour emoji cannot match. Kaomoji are theatrical without being flashy.
- Gamme expressive — there are literally thousands of kaomoji for micro-emotions no single emoji covers: sleepy-but-content, politely panicking, happily nosebleeding, smug bear peeking from a bush, magical-girl-transformation excitement.
- Accessibilité — screen readers read each Unicode code point, which means a kaomoji is announced character by character — sometimes lovingly, sometimes hilariously. Emoji are usually announced by one pre-defined name.
- Identité communautaire — kaomoji are a badge of a specific online culture (imageboards, speedrun chats, programmer forums, anime fandom, vtuber chats). Using one is a small cultural handshake.
Comment utiliser les kaomoji — guide rapide
- Click any kaomoji on this site to copy it to your clipboard — no sign-up, no app.
- Paste it anywhere that accepts text: Slack, Discord, Twitter/X, Instagram captions, WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, email, Notion, Figma, Obsidian, a Twitch chat, a commit message, even a <code><title></code> tag.
- On mobile, long-press the copied text to paste — some apps need a second tap to flatten formatting.
- In macOS, add your favourites to System Settings → Keyboard → Text Replacements (e.g. "shr" → ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). Windows users can use PowerToys Keyboard Manager or AutoHotKey.
- Avoid double-escaping: if a chat app converts smart quotes or backslashes, the kaomoji can break. Pasting into a code fence (wrap with `backticks`) usually preserves it.
Catégories de kaomoji sur ce site
We group 962 kaomoji into six top-level families so you can find the right face fast:
- Positive Kaomoji — joie kaomoji, amour kaomoji, embarras kaomoji, sympathie kaomoji, riant kaomoji, rougissant kaomoji, baiser kaomoji — smiles, blushes, hearts, bows.
- Negative Kaomoji — colère kaomoji, tristesse kaomoji, douleur kaomoji, peur kaomoji, insatisfaction kaomoji, en pleurs kaomoji, agacé kaomoji — tears, rage lines, defensive hands.
- Neutral Kaomoji — indifférence kaomoji, confusion kaomoji, doute kaomoji, surprise kaomoji, réfléchissant kaomoji — flat mouths, ???, side-eye, raised brows.
- Actions Kaomoji — salutation kaomoji, câlin kaomoji, clin d'œil kaomoji, s'excusant kaomoji, écriture kaomoji, en cours d'exécution kaomoji, en train de dormir kaomoji, saignement de nez kaomoji, cacher kaomoji, hausser les épaules kaomoji, table flip kaomoji, facepalm kaomoji — kaomoji that actually do something.
- Animals Kaomoji — ours kaomoji, chat kaomoji, chien kaomoji, lapin kaomoji, porc kaomoji, oiseau kaomoji, araignée kaomoji, poisson kaomoji, hamster kaomoji, sceau kaomoji, serpent kaomoji, papillon kaomoji, chauve-souris kaomoji — the ASCII menagerie.
- Autres Kaomoji — amis kaomoji, ennemis kaomoji, magie kaomoji, nourriture kaomoji, musique kaomoji, jeux kaomoji, visages kaomoji, spécial kaomoji, étincelles kaomoji, étoiles kaomoji, cœurs & symboles kaomoji, fleurs kaomoji, météo kaomoji — special characters that do not fit the other boxes.
Every kaomoji has its own page with copy-paste, a description, related keywords, and a grid of similar kaomoji from the same group, so discovery keeps going.
Kaomoji célèbres que vous connaissez probablement déjà
- ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ — the shrug. A 2010s icon; Slack auto-suggests it; popularised by Kanye West and then by literally everyone.
- (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ — the table flip. One of the most animated kaomoji ever made — peak 2channel energy.
- ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ — l'ours. La mascotte des développeurs Go-lang et l'esthétique Tsum Tsum.
- (。◕‿◕。) — le sourire étincelant classique. Parfait pour dire « merci ! » et « youpi ! ».le sourire étincelant classique. Parfait pour les messages de « merci ! » et « youpi ! ».le sourire étincelant classique. Parfait pour les messages « merci ! » et « youpi ! ».
- (ಠ_ಠ) — l'« air de désapprobation ». Le Lenny de la culture des mèmes des années 2010.« regard de désapprobation ». Le Lenny de la culture des mèmes des années 2010.« regard de désapprobation ». Le Lenny de la culture des mèmes des années 2010.
- ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) — Lenny Face. Not strictly Japanese-origin, but adopted into the kaomoji family. Use sparingly.
- (*/ω\*) — visage embarrassé / caché. Codé en anime.
Kaomoji sur différentes plateformes
Kaomoji are just Unicode text, so they work everywhere plain text works. A few platform notes:
- Slack / Discord — kaomoji paste fine. Discord strips some diacritics in code blocks; use inline instead. Slack has a built-in shrug command:
/shrug your message. - Twitter / X — full support including combining diacritics. Long kaomoji with many combining marks still count as only a few characters, which is useful for the 280-character limit.
- iOS / macOS — native text replacement lets you type a short code and have it expanded into your favourite kaomoji.
- Windows — Windows 10+ has a built-in kaomoji keyboard at Win + . (period). It ships hundreds of kaomoji out of the box.
- Android — Gboard has a dedicated ASCII tab; Samsung Keyboard exposes kaomoji under the emoji menu.
- Terminals / CLI — any terminal with a font that supports basic katakana and extended Latin will render most kaomoji. Some extremely elaborate kaomoji with stacked combining marks may render raggedly in monospaced fonts.
Culture, communautés et lore des kaomoji
Kaomoji are a living part of internet folk culture. On the Japanese side: 2channel's ASCII-art boards, Nico Nico Douga comment streams, and the enormous kaomoji dictionaries hosted on personal homepages in the late 2000s. On the Western side: early LiveJournal + DeviantArt communities, the 2010s Tumblr cutesy era, MMO guild chats where kaomoji served as quick emotional reactions, and more recently the vtuber scene, where kaomoji pair naturally with the anime-coded communication style.
Interestingly, some kaomoji have travelled in the other direction: the shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ was popularised in English and is now often found in Japanese chat too. Kaomoji are a two-way bridge between cultures.
FAQ sur les kaomoji
Les kaomoji sont-ils la même chose que les emoji ?
No. Emoji are single picture characters encoded in the Unicode standard and rendered with colour fonts. Kaomoji are faces built out of several plain text characters — punctuation, brackets, kana, diacritics. Kaomoji do not require an emoji-aware font.
Comment copier un kaomoji sur mobile ?
Tap any kaomoji on this site; it is copied to your clipboard automatically. Then long-press in the target app and choose "Paste". Most kaomoji are short enough that a single tap is all it takes.
Pourquoi mon kaomoji a-t-il l'air bizarre / carré dans certaines applications ?Pourquoi mon kaomoji a-t-il l'air bizarre / carré dans certaines applications ?Pourquoi mon kaomoji a-t-il l'air bizarre / carré dans certaines applications ?
The app is missing a glyph. Usually this is the Japanese kana (ツ, ω) or a less-common bracket. Updating the OS or switching to a Noto / Arial Unicode MS font fixes almost every case.
Puis-je utiliser un kaomoji sur Twitter / X sans dépasser mon nombre de caractères ?Puis-je utiliser un kaomoji sur Twitter / X sans dépasser mon nombre de caractères ?Puis-je utiliser des kaomoji sur Twitter / X sans dépasser mon nombre de caractères ?
Yes. Each Unicode code point counts as one character for Twitter. Combining diacritics are still individual characters, so an elaborate multi-layer kaomoji can eat 20+ characters; classic kaomoji are usually 5–12.
Les kaomoji sont-ils accessibles pour les lecteurs d'écran ?
Screen readers announce each code point, which makes kaomoji verbose but readable. For maximum accessibility, always pair a decorative kaomoji with a short written sentence describing the emotion.
Puis-je créer mes propres kaomoji ?
Absolutely — kaomoji are open-source by nature. Pick eyes, a mouth, brackets, and optional hands or effects, and assemble. If you want your creation on this site, drop it in a commit message or share it with us.
Quelle est la séquence d'échappement du kaomoji shrug ?
Le shrug canon est ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. En l'écrivant dans un code ou un fichier Markdown, échappez les antislashs :Lorsque vous l'écrivez dans un code ou un fichier Markdown, échappez les barres obliques inverses :Lors de son écriture en code ou dans un fichier Markdown, échappez les barres obliques inverses : ¯\\\\_(ツ)_/¯. La plupart des applications de chat gèrent correctement la version avec un seul antislash.La plupart des applications de chat gèrent correctement la version avec une seule barre oblique inverse.La plupart des applications de chat gèrent correctement la version avec une seule barre oblique inverse.
Est-ce 'kaomoji' ou 'kaomojis' au pluriel ?
Both are used in English. Purists follow Japanese (no plural -s: "ten kaomoji"), but "kaomojis" is widely understood.