Opera wants you to ditch text, now supports emoji-only URLs

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Opera Emoji Urls Banner
Opera Emoji Urls Banner (Image credit: Opera)

What you need to know

  • Opera now lets you browse web addresses that don't have text in them.
  • Integration with Yat will allow people to access web addresses made up of only emojis.
  • Other web browsers don't yet support emojis in URLs.

Opera has announced a partnership with Yat, the company that allows you to own personalized strings of emojis that can be used in URLs.

The move will mean that people could buy a new string of emoji that would then be their new web address — allowing people to click it and have Opera redirect to a website or service.

The move was announced via a blog post with the folks behind Opera calling it a "major shift in the way the internet works." Whether that's a good thing is another matter.

With Opera as the first browser to enable emoji-only based web addresses, we're bringing a new level of creativity to the internet, letting you navigate the web with strings of emojis as URLs, instead of letters and words.This is a major shift in the way the internet works, and is sign of the changing times. Thirty-some years ago, the world wide web was first launched to the public, but not much has changed in regards to weblinks, and we still use .com in our URLs. Now though, through this integration with Yat, all you Opera fans can ditch .com, or even words in general, and make your way to websites using emojis. It's new, it's easier and certainly a lot more fun.

Want to bag a string of emojis for your own web address? You can do so over at the Yat website. Of course, only Opera users will be able to click your links for now. Whether that will change and browsers like Safari and Chrome will jump on board is anyone's guess right now.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.