How to Type the Shrug Emoji ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ on iPhone (and 29 Other Kaomoji)

July 16, 2026

The shrug — ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ — is the most useful thing you can’t type. It isn’t a real emoji, so it’s not on the emoji keyboard. It’s a kaomoji: a little face built from Unicode characters, including a Japanese katakana and two backslashes that live nowhere near your iPhone’s main keyboard. Typing it by hand takes about eleven taps across three keyboard layers, and most people get the backslashes wrong.

Here are the three real ways to type it on an iPhone, from quick-and-dirty to actually solved.

Option 1: Copy it from this page

The fastest way to shrug exactly once. Press and hold to copy:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Done. The problem is next time — and there is always a next time. If you find yourself searching “shrug emoji” more than once a month, you’re the person options 2 and 3 exist for.

Option 2: iPhone’s built-in Text Replacement

iOS has a hidden feature that expands a short trigger into a longer phrase:

Open Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement.
Tap +.
In Phrase, paste ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
In Shortcut, type something you won’t type by accident — ;shrug works well (the semicolon prevents it from firing mid-word).
Tap Save.

Now typing ;shrug anywhere produces the kaomoji. This genuinely works, and for a single kaomoji it’s a fine answer.

The limits show up when you want more than one. Every kaomoji is another trip through Settings: find the characters somewhere, copy them, create the entry, invent another shortcut you’ll have to remember. There’s no way to organize entries, no way to browse what you have, and no way to share a set with anyone else. Text Replacement is a place where kaomoji go one by one — nobody sets up thirty of them this way.

Option 3: Import a kaomoji library in one tap

This is the approach that scales past the shrug. Text Expander Keyboard is a custom iPhone keyboard for saved snippets — and it imports whole collections from a single file.

We made a free Kaomoji Pack with 30 of them, organized by mood: the classics (shrug, table flip (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻, Lenny face ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), the look of disapproval ಠ_ಠ), plus happy, upset, animals, and action sets. Download the file, open it in the app, and every kaomoji is a labeled button on your keyboard — in Messages, Instagram, Slack, anywhere you type. No shortcuts to memorize, nothing to configure one entry at a time.

A taste of what’s in the pack:

Shrug — ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Table flip — (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Table restore — ┬─┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)
Look of disapproval — ಠ_ಠ
Bear — ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
Facepalm — (－‸ლ)
Deal with it — (⌐■_■)
Sparkle joy — ✧٩(ˊωˋ*)و✧
Magic spell — (∩ᵔᵕᵔ)⊃━☆ﾟ.*
Sad shrug — ¯\_(⊙︿⊙)_/¯

The full pack and every kaomoji in it are also open source on GitHub, where the import file format is documented — so you can build your own pack or fix our taste in bears.

Which one should you use?

Shrugging once a year: copy-paste from this page, and godspeed. One kaomoji you use constantly: iOS Text Replacement is built in and free — set up ;shrug and enjoy. A whole vocabulary of them: get the pack, because thirty trips through Settings is not a hobby anyone needs.