Love it or not, Apple’s Animojis, the new talking emojis that has your voice and facial expressions are a hit. Ever since Apple unveiled this new iPhone feature on the iPhone X, every one of us wants to know how they work and what we can do with them. Here we have got you covered.
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Less than a week later, Animojis are proving to be a fun way to communicate through iMessage and beyond. Once you learn a few tricks, they are a lot more flexible and fun than just sending an iMessage to your friend.
What is Animoji?
Animojis are the custom, animated versions of popular emojis that speak in their owners’ voices and mimic their facial expressions. Apple described Animoji as “custom animated messages that use your voice and reflect your facial expressions.”
Which devices support Animoji?
It appears that, for now, the feature is limited to the iPhone X thanks to its more sophisticated front-facing True Depth camera and facial recognition technology.
Anyone with iOS 11 can receive and view Animoji, but to create and share them, you will need an Apple device that can do Face ID. Right now, that’s only the iPhone X.
Which emojis are available as Animoji?
Apple hasn’t made every emoji into an animated 3D emojis. So far, only a dozen animoji characters were added. They are: alien, cat, chicken, dog, fox, monkey, mouse, panda bear, pig, poop, robot, and unicorn. We assume more characters will be added soon.
Where do I find them?
To begin using animojis, open the iMessage app, built right into iOS 11 on the iPhone X. Just launch Messages, and then start a new message or open a thread to reply to someone.
Next to the App Store icon will be the animoji app icon. Select it. A few seconds later, you will notice that the animated character begins tracking your facial expressions. Hold your iPhone X in front of your face, press the red button to record and begin moving your eyebrows, lips, or eyes to allow the animoji mimic your movement.
Scroll through the list on the left side to change characters. Tap the up arrow to make the Animoji app window bigger, so you can more easily see all the available emoji.
How does Animoji Work?
Apple uses the iPhone X’s exclusive built-in facial recognition technology to create these lifelike characters, which you can share with your friends (only Apple users) through Apple’s Messages app in iOS 11.
First, you choose from one of the 12 animoji characters. You then speak into the phone, dictating the message you want to send. If you make a facial expression, like a pout, shaking head or a raised eyebrow, the phone will notice and recreate the expression on the Animoji character. So, as you move your face and talk, they will do the same, in real-time. Right now the Animoji technology can recognize more than 50 facial movements, according to Apple.
In short, Animoji takes advantage of the TrueDepth camera system used for Face ID as well as the A11 Bionic chip to capture and analyse more than 50 different muscle movements in your face.
Apple’s new Animoji feature works very similar to Snapchat filters, only instead of being based on custom masks developed by Snapchat, they are based on popular emoji.
How to send/share Animojis?
After you have made your recording, you can then send the animojis as video messages or stickers in iMessage, which will be sent to your friends as a looping clip.
Don’t like what you captured? There’s a Redo button that will show up once recording has stopped. Tap the blue button when you are ready to share it.
How long can an Animoji recording be?
Animoji recordings are limited to just 10 seconds. That’s enough for a quick message to your friend, but not nearly long enough to sing a song, or deliver one of your favorite movie monologues.
How do I save my Animoji recordings?
Once you have sent an Animoji message, or if you receive one, tap on it to play it. You will then notice a ‘Share’ button in the lower left. Tap on it. Then tap ‘Save Video’ to save your Animoji masterpiece.
To use Animoji in other apps, you will do the same thing as the above step, only instead of pressing Save Video, you will press the share icon of whatever social media or another app you want to use.
Can I use Animoji as a Sticker?
Yes. Just bring up the Animoji interface, pick your character, make a face, and drag the Animoji up into your conversation to create an animoji sticker.
Does Animoji use my Face ID data?
NO. No apps can use your Face ID data. The operating system doesn’t even have access to it. It’s locked away in the Secure Enclave on your iPhone (a separate piece of silicon from the main processor) and is never sent to Apple nor shared with any apps at all.
But developers do have access to the TrueDepth camera through the ARKit interface, which takes the regular front-facing camera input and combines it with a course 3D mesh of your face. However, developers can’t use this information to unlock your phone or analyze it to produce a set of data that could unlock your phone. In practice, it’s not really more dangerous than taking a selfie.
Texting is about to get a lot more fun now!
