Your WhatsApp group's most used emojis

Ask any group what “their” emoji is and there’ll be a debate. Some will say 😂, others will swear it’s 🍻, and someone will remember the era when everything got a 🙃. The answer is in the chat, counted message by message. This guide explains how to get it out, what counts and what doesn’t, and how to read the result.

What WhatsApp shows you (almost nothing)

WhatsApp has no emoji statistics. The closest thing is the recent or frequently used section of the emoji keyboard, and it has three problems:

• It’s about your phone, not a chat: it mixes everything you type everywhere.
• It gives no numbers, just a rough order.
• It says nothing about anyone else.

To know a group’s emojis, or each person’s, you have to count them in the chat.

How to see a group’s most used emojis

1. Export the group. On iPhone, tap the group name and Export Chat; on Android, ⋮ > More > Export chat. Choose Without media. The export guide has the details.
2. Analyze it. Drop the file into the Chat Recap analyzer. It’s processed in your browser, without uploading the chat to any server, and it’s free.

In the result you’ll see:

Where	What it tells you
The emoji screen in the Wrapped	The group’s most used emoji and how many times it appeared
Report: group emojis	The top 10 emojis, with their counts
Report: participants table	How many emojis each person wrote and their favorite emoji
Awards	Emoji Royalty, plus the Laugher, which also counts 😂 and friends

How they’re counted

Counting emojis sounds trivial, but there are catches. These are the rules Chat Recap follows:

• One by one. “😂😂😂” is three emojis, not one.
• Combined emojis count as one. Flags (🇬🇧), families (👨‍👩‍👧) or emojis like ❤️‍🔥 are built from several pieces, but count as a single emoji.
• Skin tones split them. 👍 and 👍🏽 are different emojis. In groups where everyone uses their own tone, the same gesture can appear several times in the ranking.
• Symbols that read as punctuation don’t count. ©, ® or ‼ are technically emojis, but they read as punctuation, so they’re ignored.
• Only inside text messages. Stickers are images, not text: in the export they only leave an omitted-media marker.
• Reactions don’t exist in the export. WhatsApp leaves them out of the file, so they can’t be counted.
• Deleted means lost. If someone deleted a message full of emojis, the text is gone; the guide to deleted messages explains what’s left.

How to read the result

• First place is almost always a laugh. 😂, 🤣 or 💀 top a lot of groups. The interesting part is usually from second place down: that’s where the group’s personality shows (🍻, ⚽, 🙏, 🎉).
• Total and density aren’t the same. Whoever writes the most usually has the most emojis overall. Emoji Royalty measures something else: emojis per text message, with at least 5 emojis and a minimum of activity. So it can go to someone who writes little but never without an emoji.
• Each person’s favorite emoji says a lot. In the participants table, seeing everyone’s emoji next to their name is one of the things people talk about most.
• Laughing has its own award. The Laugher (who laughs the most per message) counts hahas, lols and laughing emojis like 😂, 🤣, 😆, 😹 and 💀. The awards guide explains every rule.

Games with the group’s emojis

• Guess the group’s emoji before watching the Wrapped. Everyone bets on one; whoever gets it right wins, or whoever gets second place right.
• Whose emoji is this? Read out each person’s favorite emoji, without the name, and let the group guess who it belongs to.
• Emoji movies using only the group’s top 10 emojis. Harder than it sounds.

There are more ideas in WhatsApp group games.