Manage custom emoji permissions

You can help your organization personalize their messages, express their team’s culture, and find the perfect way to share what they want to say with custom emojis in Google Chat. These are unique to your organization and a great way for your organization to engage and connect with each other. Users can upload their own emojis, which are then available to all users in the organization within their emoji picker in Chat. 

As an admin, you can manage custom emoji permissions by:

• Limiting who can create custom emojis
• Specifying instructions to be shown during custom emoji creation
• Designating emoji managers who can manage the custom emojis in your organization
• Accessing and exporting audit logs for custom emoji deletion or creation

Chat apps accessing custom emoji data

Apps that have access to messages with custom emojis can see the emojis and the names assigned to them. To access custom emojis, apps require the proper OAuth scope, such as https://www.googleapis.com/auth/chat.messages. Apps can only access custom emojis when:

• A user mentions an app in a message that has custom emojis in the text body or as reactions
• A user triggers an app's slash command that includes custom emojis in its message body

Limit who can create custom emojis

By default, all users in the organization (but not external guests) can create custom emojis. As an admin, you can limit this ability to specific organizational units if you want. For details on organizational units, see Add an organizational unit.

You can decide who can create custom emojis through an Admin Console Root and OU setting. You can turn the ability to create custom emojis on or off at the organization level by following these steps:

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

   Sign in using an account with super administrator privileges (does not end in @gmail.com).

2. In the Admin console, go to Menu  AppsGoogle WorkspaceGoogle Chat.
3. Click the Emoji Options section.
4. Select the organizational unit you’d like to adjust.
5. In the Allow users to create custom emojis section, select an option:
   • On—Users can create custom emojis. 
     • Enter a Community guidelines instruction for users when they create custom emojis, which appears in addition to the default text. For example, “When you create an emoji, it’s available to everyone in your organization in their emoji picker.”
     • Enter a URL to share further details on organization-specific guidelines or any notices related to custom emojis.
   • Off—Users can’t create custom emojis.
6. (Optional) To disable emoji creation entirely for the domain, select the top-level organizational unit for your organization, then in the Allow users to create custom emojis section, select Off.

   If you turn off custom emoji creation for users in an organization, those users can still use existing custom emojis.

7. Click Save.

Designate emoji managers who can manage all custom emojis in your organization

As an admin, you can designate a specific organizational unit or configuration group to be emoji managers who can remove problematic custom emojis and help promote healthy norms. We recommend that you choose appropriate people as emoji managers through a new or existing organizational unit, or through a new or existing configuration group. For details, see Learn about emoji managers.

Note: By default, Allow users to manage custom emojis is off for all organizational units or configuration groups. If you don’t add an organizational unit or configuration group as the emoji manager, no one can browse or delete all custom emojis.

Before you begin: If you need to create a new organizational unit or configuration group, see Add an organizational unit or Customize service settings with configuration groups.

You can set the role of emoji manager by following these steps: 

1. In the Admin console, go to Menu  AppsGoogle WorkspaceGoogle Chat.
2. Click the Emoji Options section.
3. In the left panel, select the organizational unit (under Organizational units) or the configuration group (under Groups) you’d like to designate as emoji managers. 
4. In the Allow users to manage custom emojis section, select an option:
   • On—Users of the selected organizational unit or configuration group can delete custom emojis and view creator information.
   • Off—Users of the selected organizational unit or configuration group can’t delete custom emojis nor view creator information.
5. Click Save.

Access and export audit logs

As an admin with a supported edition, you can access logs associated with custom emoji creation or deletion with the security investigation tool.

With these logs, you can see details of custom emoji creation or deletion such as:

• New attributes added—Emoji shortcode (that is, the emoji name) and Filename (that is, the filename of the image file uploaded by the user when creating the emoji).
• New events added—Emoji created and Emoji deleted.

Learn more about using Chat logs with the investigation tool.

Related topics

• Customize service settings with configuration groups
• Learn about custom emojis in Google Chat