How to get emotes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Clap and cheer for your friends with cute emotes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you have the ability to chat with your friends, but you can also use emotes as well for wordless communication. Naturally, seeing other people use emotes prompts the question of how to get your own emotes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. To help answer this question, we’ve put together a guide explaining how to get emotes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

How to get emotes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

How to get emotes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Wait for your Villagers to approach you rather than you approach them, and they'll teach you new emotes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
© Nintendo

To get emotes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you have to do a few specific things. First, you’ll need to have played through several days of the game, and finished constructing both Blathers' Museum and the Nook's Cranny store. Once this is done, you simply need to wander around your island and wait for one of our residents to run up to you. 

By speaking with them, they’ll teach you how to use emotes so you can communicate with them even when you don’t want to talk. That's right, instead of you going to them, they'll come to you and show off an emote, before teaching it to you in turn. There are many emotes to learn, and after you're given the first one, you should regularly chat to your residents to see if they'll teach you more.

Inviting more residents to the island while out on Mystery Island Tours or other places will also mean more people who can teach you emotes in future! When you’ve unlocked emotes, you can use them whenever you like by pressing ZR. In doing so, a wheel will appear with the emotes you have available. Select one, and your character will do the emote.

If you’re running low on available space, you can swap emotes with ones you prefer more than others as you collect them in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Forgotten all the emotes you’ve unlocked thus far? Press Y and you can view all of your available emotes. To recap, you’ll need to have finished up the Nook's Cranny store and the Museum, then wait for a villager to run up to you. When you see them greeting you with actual text and an emote, speak to them and they’ll teach you an emote in Animal Crossing: New Horizons!

Now that you know how to get emotes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, we’ve got a few other guides we think you might like including how to invite new Villagers to your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, how to help Wisp in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and how to sleep in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Morgan is a writer, indie game lover, and socially awkward coffee addict. Need something? Morgan can be reached at morgan.shaver@allgamers.com or if you like, you can say hello using GIFs on Twitter.

Power

Shop Now

Keyboards

Shop Now