There's a sneaky way to make your passwords more secure: emojis 👍

Passwords can be difficult to manage. They have to be long and complex enough that hackers can’t guess them through brute force, and you need to have a unique password for every single account so that one leaked password doesn’t put all of your accounts at risk.

One option for making this manageable is to use a password manager, which holds all of your passwords, associates them with your accounts, and automatically fills login pages for your convenience.

But what if you need a password that’s just as secure as a randomly generated string of nonsense yet still easy to memorize? In that case, consider using emojis in your passwords.

Using emojis in your passwords

Since emojis are part of the Unicode standard, they’re just as valid as letters, numbers, and symbols for use in text. And with over 3,600 emojis to choose from, the inclusion of emojis drastically increases the number of possible combinations that a hacker has to work through if they want to crack your password through brute force.

It’s true! A password comprised of just 5 emojis has a similar complexity to a password comprised of 9 alphanumeric characters. For best results, you can just mix one or two emojis into your password for an instant boost to password strength.

But password strength isn’t the only benefit here. Emojis can also be easier to remember, especially if you have a few emojis that you like to use but others rarely use. You can even use ChatGPT to translate a sentence into emojis to be used as your password:

Joel Lee / IDG

One big caveat to be aware of

Even though emojis are technically Unicode, not all services support emojis in passwords. Many services reject passwords that contain characters that aren’t letters, numbers, or symbols.

So, you have to test for yourself whether a service accepts emojis. And it’s not enough to successfully register an account or make a password change — make sure you try to log in afterwards.

Why? Because some services inexplicably allow emojis in passwords during registration and password changes, but not in their actual login forms. In the worst case scenario, you may have to undo the password change using the “Forgot password” function.

Maybe we’ll see greater acceptance of emojis in passwords with time. They are, after all, a fun and easy way to improve both the security and memorability of passwords. Regardless, you should be using a password manager whether or not you incorporate emojis.