Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
TL;DR Gboard is working on a new setting that changes how emoji are scaled.
Right now, emoji scale with display size, not font size.
The toggle would allow emoji to grow right along with the text.
Even if we sometimes feel a little burnt out on them, it’s hard to deny the fundamental appeal of emoji. Including just the right one brightens up a dull text, or even helps convey some emotional subtlety that might have otherwise gone missed. But in order to get the most out of emoji, we need to be able to clearly see them, and it looks like Google’s working on a change in Gboard that could soon help out with just that.
Right now, you’ve got two main screen-scaling options in Android: You can set font size, and you can set display size. The latter scales everything, while the former is helpful if you’re just struggling with text. But emoji sort of exist somewhere right on the cusp of text, and it’s not always clear how software should treat them.
So far, Gboard’s emoji picker has only responded to changes in display scaling, and not font. No matter how large you set your system font, you’ll still see emoji the same size there — but increase display size, and they’ll grow.
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In Gboard’s version 16.7.4.861137547-beta-arm64-v8a update, we’ve uncovered a new feature that finally lets those emoji get bigger. This isn’t user-facing just yet, but when Google’s ready to flip it on, we should find a new Gboard setting that allows us to scale emoji along with font size.
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