Home

How to Add the Secret 'Vulcan Salute' Emoji to Your iPhone

Apr 9, 2015 12:05 AM

Apr 14, 2015 04:39 PM

Text message conversation with the phrase "live long and prosper" typed on a smartphone keyboard.

If you're a Trekkie, you might be surprised to find that Spock's popular Vulcan salute can actually be used as an emoji on your iPhone. With the public release of iOS 8.3, you'll now have updated unicode for more diverse emojis.

Strangely, Apple added support for the Spock emoji, but didn't include it in the keyboard itself. But with a little simple trickery, you can add the Vulcan salute emoji as a keyboard shortcut on iOS 8.3.

Use Safari (it may not appear on Chrome) to open this tweet from Cult of Mac and copy the Vulcan salute emoji. Now, head over to Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts on your device and create a shortcut for the emoji.

Note: The emoji will only appear if you're running iOS 8.3. If you or the recipient is running an older version of iOS, then it'll probably look like an alien head in a box.

How to Add the Secret 'Vulcan Salute' Emoji to Your iPhone

Once the shortcut is saved, enter it from your keyboard and Spock's Vulcan salute emoji will appear.

Text conversation on a smartphone with messages reading "what's up" and "live long and prosper."

While I'm not a huge Star Trek fan, this find is nonetheless a neat addition to the rest of my new and diverse emojis. Now let's just hope for some Star Wars love as well.

Follow Apple Hacks on Facebook and Twitter, or Gadget Hacks over on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter for more Apple news, apps, and tips.

The next big software update for iPhone is coming sometime in April and will include a Food section in Apple News+, an easy-to-miss new Ambient Music app, Priority Notifications thanks to Apple Intelligence, and updates to apps like Mail, Photos, Podcasts, and Safari. See what else is coming to your iPhone with the iOS 18.4 update.