Google prepares to kill off Gboard's Bitmoji-style Minis

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Keyboards on two Android phones
Keyboards on two Android phones (Image credit: Android Central)

What you need to know

  • Google prepares to kill Minis from the Gboard app.
  • Minis were a personalized emoji feature for Gboard, akin to the popular Bitmoji or Apple's Memoji.
  • Gboard was updated earlier this year to include an emoji kitchen feature.

Google is set to kill off Minis, a feature of the Gboard app that debuted a couple of years ago. While no official announcement has been made, an APK teardown of a recent Gboard beta by XDA sees the new string "Note: Minis will go away soon" added to the code.

Google's Gboard Minis in 3 styles

Source: Google (Image credit: Source: Google)

Minis were somewhat of an overlooked feature that never had the cultural appeal of Apple's Memoji. Gboard's Bitmoji integration also meant that it was easier for users to make use of the more standard personalized emoji than whatever Google was cooking up.

Awkwardly seguing off the word cooking, Google's new emoji kitchen seems like a suitable replacement for Minis. It's not quite as personalized as Minis were, but it won't strike users as overly me too. It's a little unique, a little fun, and hopefully a bandaid for the few users who did make use of Minis.

It's not clear when Minis will be going away, but it's probably going to be before the end of the year.

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Michael Allison
Michael Allison
5 Comments
  • Gboard is the one I use and I never heard of these, guess I won't be missing them. Shows that I'm paying attention.
  • Didn't even know this was a thing and I use Gboard.
  • They are meh. Mine look dreadful.
  • Anything to improve the performance of Gboard. Which includes reducing its size and ram usage.
  • I use Gboard and totally forgot these exist. I won't miss 'em. I tend to stick with emojis and gifs, and occasionally I'll remember to use Bitmoji, but the Gboard stickers have been pretty underwhelming.