The world's most popular emojis

The faces are the most commonly sent emojis around the world. Photo / Screengrab from Apple

You're most likely to get a skull emoji from an American pal, Brazilians use a lot of cats while Aussies mostly send the digital drinks.

These were the findings of a new study, analysing the global use of over a billion tiny mobile images - emojis - in 60 categories.

Not surprisingly, the most popular were the happy and sad faces - making up over half of the digital imagery sent around the world.

Hearts, hand signs and signals (like thumbs up and peace signs) were next in line, while romance emojis rounded out the most commonly used.

The most forgotten emojis include those used to symbolise travel, film and reading materials, according to the study, published this week.

Meanwhile, Malaysians are considered the most emoji-savvy, using the widest variety of pics.

Our fun-loving Australian neighbours used alcohol emojis, like clinking beers or a cocktail, more than twice the average. They also love the emojis of junk food, drugs, clothes and animals.

Canadians were more likely to send violent and raunchy emojis, which the study defined as the "banana, raised fist, eggplant, peach, cherries, Cancer astrological symbol". They were also most likely to use the quirky poop picture.

The French were found to be the most positive - over half of emojis sent were some sort of heart. However, it was the Russians who were most likely to use the tiny image of a couple kissing.

Brazilians were noted for cartoon cat usage, along with pics representing music and religion.

The report was published by London-based keyboard app developer SwiftKey.

- nzherald.co.nz