There’s nothing more frustrating than pulling a legendary dance emote from a Premium Starr Drop, only to fumble through menus for 10 minutes before a match trying to equip it. If you’ve ever struggled to swap out default emotes for new ones you’ve unlocked, you’re not alone. Learning how to change your emotes in Brawl Stars is a simple skill that makes every match feel far more personal, whether you’re celebrating a clutch goal in Brawl Ball or laughing off a silly mistake in Solo Showdown. You don’t need any special permissions or paid items to tweak your loadout, either — the entire process takes less than 30 seconds once you know where to look.
How to Change Your Emotes in Brawl Stars: Full Walkthrough
First, you should know that emote loadouts are tied to individual brawlers, not your entire account. That means you can set a completely different set of emotes for Spike than you use for Bull, which is perfect for matching each character’s vibe. The process works the same for both iOS and Android devices, with no difference across global or regional versions of the game.
To start, open Brawl Stars and tap the “Brawlers” tab on the left side of your main menu. Scroll until you find the brawler you want to customize, then tap their portrait to open their individual profile page. Look for the small smiley face icon near the bottom of the screen, right next to the skin selection button, and tap it to open the emote loadout menu.
You’ll see four empty (or filled) slots for emotes, plus a grid of all the emotes you’ve unlocked so far for that brawler. You can assign up to 4 unique emotes per brawler, and you can swap them out as many times as you want when you’re not in an active match. To swap an emote, just tap the one you want to remove from your loadout, then tap the new emote you want to add in its place. Some players prefer to drag and drop, but the tap method works just as well and is far less likely to lead to accidental swaps.
If you want to use the same set of emotes across all your brawlers, you don’t have to manually set them one by one. Just tap the three-dot menu in the top right corner of the emote loadout screen, then select “Copy to all brawlers” to apply your current loadout to every character you own. That’s a huge time saver if you have a favorite set of emotes you use for every match, regardless of which brawler you’re playing.
Tips to Unlock New Rare Emotes for Your Loadout
Swapping emotes is only fun if you have a good selection to choose from, right? You don’t have to spend real money to get cool, rare emotes, either. The game gives out dozens of free emotes every year through regular rewards and events, so you can build a solid collection without touching your wallet.
Some of the most sought-after emotes are limited-time collaboration or seasonal releases, so you’ll want to keep an eye on the in-game event tab to make sure you don’t miss them. Limited-time event emotes are never re-released in most cases, so even if you don’t think you’ll use one right away, it’s worth claiming it for your collection if it’s available for free.
These are the most reliable ways to unlock new emotes fast:
- Claim free rewards from the free track of the Brawl Pass every season, which usually includes at least 3-4 emotes per cycle
- Open Premium Starr Drops for a chance to pull epic and legendary emotes, including rare animated variants you can’t get anywhere else
- Complete limited-time community challenges to get exclusive collaboration emotes, like past releases tied to popular movies and content creators
- Purchase discounted emote bundles from the in-game shop during holiday sales, where you can get 5-10 emotes for half the regular coin price
You might also get random emotes as login rewards during special events, so make sure you open the game at least once a day during holiday periods like Lunar New Year or Brawl Stars’ anniversary. I once got a legendary Chuck emote just for logging in on the game’s 6th anniversary, so it pays to check in regularly even if you don’t have time to play a full match.
How to Pick the Right Emote Loadout for Every Match
Once you have a solid collection of emotes, it’s time to build loadouts that fit the kind of matches you’re playing. A lot of players just throw random emotes into their slots without thinking, but picking the right ones can make your matches way more fun, and even help you build better rapport with random teammates.
If you’re playing competitive ranked matches, stick to friendly, positive emotes like celebration waves or thumbs up. Avoid using overly taunting emotes in competitive ranked matches, because they can tilt your teammates if you use them after a mistake, or make opposing teams target you specifically for the rest of the match. I’ve had entire teams focus me just because I used a laughing emote after scoring a goal in a high-rank Brawl Ball match, so trust me when I say it’s not worth the hassle.
If you’re playing casual matches with friends, feel free to load up on silly, chaotic emotes. It’s way more fun to react to a friend’s terrible play with a goofy dance emote than a toxic taunt, and it keeps the mood light even if you’re losing badly. You can also match your emotes to your brawler’s personality: use tough, flex emotes for El Primo, silly dance emotes for Edgar, and cute, sparkly emotes for Spike to make your gameplay feel even more immersive.
You don’t have to stick to one loadout forever, either. I swap my emotes out every week depending on the event mode I’m playing, or if I unlock a new emote I’m excited to test out. Since there’s no cooldown or cost to swap emotes, you can tweak your loadout as often as you want to fit your mood.
Common Emote Customization Mistakes to Avoid
Even long-time Brawl Stars players make mistakes with emote customization from time to time. These are the most common errors that lead to frustration, and how you can avoid them entirely.
The biggest mistake new players make is forgetting that emotes are brawler-specific. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve set a cool new emote for Shelly, then hopped into a match with Colt and wondered why it wasn’t showing up in my emote wheel. Emote loadouts are tied to individual brawlers, not your entire account, so you’ll need to set them separately for each character unless you use the copy to all brawlers feature we mentioned earlier.
Another common mistake is wasting coins on common emotes from the daily shop. Common emotes drop all the time from free Starr Drops and Brawl Pass rewards, so there’s no reason to spend 500 coins on a basic thumbs up emote when you’ll probably pull it for free within a week. Never spend real money on common emotes unless they have personal meaning to you, because they’re not worth the cost when so many great emotes are available for free.
Finally, don’t fill all four of your emote slots with the same type of emote. If all your emotes are celebration dances, you won’t have anything to use to apologize to your team after you accidentally throw a match, or laugh off a silly mistake. Try to have one positive celebration emote, one playful joke emote, one apologetic emote, and one fun reaction emote in every loadout to cover every possible scenario that comes up during a match.
At the end of the day, learning how to change your emotes in Brawl Stars is a small, simple tweak that makes your entire gameplay experience feel a lot more personal. You don’t need the rarest, most expensive emotes to have fun — even the default ones work great if you use them to connect with teammates and celebrate good plays. Don’t stress too much about building the perfect loadout, either. The best emotes are the ones that make you smile when you use them, regardless of how rare they are or what other players think of them.