Twitch is a rapidly growing community of interactive live streamers that feature content like gaming, sports, music, entertainment, etc. Its popularity is mostly due to the ability to engage with viewers in real-time. One of the primary ways of interacting with other Twitch users is through a live chat. The chat creates community engagement and allows for the creativity of expression— like through Twitch emotes.

If Twitch emotes are showing up as text in your chat, those users are utilizing browser extensions to create their unique emotes. If you don’t also have these browser extensions, you will not be able to see the emotes as an image.

Additionally, if a creator or controller of a chat doesn’t have these browser extensions emotes enabled in their chat, they will appear as text instead. Emotes have become an integral part of the Twitch conversation; third parties are creating browser extensions to give users a larger variety of emotes than Twitch currently allows. Read on for a rundown of the most popular browser extensions among Twitch users and how you can download them today.

What Are the Most Popular Browser Extensions for Twitch?

Emotes are the emojis iPhones, and androids wish they had. Twitch has its library of in-app emotes you can find in your dashboard under “Viewer Rewards.” There are opportunities to unlock emotes by earning subscriber points, and you can upload emotes into your library. Still, some users desire a bit more variety than what Twitch offers.

The two most popular browser extensions for Twitch emojis are FrankerFacez (FFZ) and BetterTTV (BTTV). Both are community-driven and free to download and use. If you have a fresh idea for an emote, these extensions are user-uploaded so that you can share your custom emoji with other users.

If you want some help making some of your own fun Twitch emotes, visit Placeit.net.

Most recommend downloading both extensions since so many in the Twitch community, including the majority of creators, use both. Without both, you will likely continue to get emotes in the chat that appears as text.

How to Download FrankerFacez and BetterTTV

To use or see the emojis from FrankerFacez and BetterTTV, you need to download each extension and then enable them in your Twitch account. If you’re a creator, FFZ and BTTV are great tools for creating emotes specifically for your channel and subscribers. Each extension has paid versions with added benefits, but the free version is still worth the download.

How to Download and Use the FrankerFacez Web Extension

There are two sets of instructions for the FrankerFacez web extension— one is to enable the use of FFZ emotes in Twitch, and the other is to add them to your Twitch stream.

To enable FFZ emotes in Twitch chat, follow these three easy steps:

1. Go to FrankerFacez.com and click on the green button at the bottom of the screen that says “Download for (Browser Name).
2. After the extension has been fully downloaded, return to the FFZ website and select the purple button, “Connect with Twitch,” in the upper right-hand corner.
3. Link FFZ to your Twitch account.

Now you can view and use FFZ emotes in your Twitch chat. If the FFZ website doesn’t automatically show your web browser for download, there is an “other browsers” option you can select, and it will show you a full list of supported web browsers.

If you stream on Twitch and want to add FFZ emotes to your stream, follow these four easy steps:

1. Go to FrankerFacez.com, download the extension, and link it to your Twitch.
2. Go back to the FFZ website and select Emotes>Public Library from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
3. Select the emotes you would like to add to your Twitch stream.
4. On the bottom right-hand corner, select “Add Selected to Channel.”

Keep in mind that both the streamer and the viewer have to have the FFZ web extension to see any FFZ emotes during the stream, and only the emotes the streamer has opted to add will be seen.

How to Download and Use the BetterTTV Web Extension

Similar to FFZ, there are two instructions for BetterTTV— one for adding the web extension to your Twitch account and the other for enabling specific BTTV emotes in your stream.

To download and enable BTTV emotes in your Twitch chat, follow these four easy steps:

1. Go to BetterTTV.com, select your web browser and download the extension.
2. Go to your Twitch account and select “Chat Settings,” the cogwheel at the bottom of any open chatbox.
3. At the bottom of your “Chat Settings” menu, select “BetterTTV Settings.”
4. Turn on the BTTV menu, emotes, and GIF emotes.

If you want to know what BTTV emotes a streamer has enabled in their Twitch stream, click on the smiling face emote next to your chat button while on their stream, and a menu will open up, showing you a full list.

If you’re a streamer and you would like to enable BTTV emotes for your streams, follow these four easy steps:

1. Go to BetterTTV.com, select your web browser and download the extension.
2. Go back to the BTTV website, select the “Emotes” tab, and log in to your Twitch account.
3. Select the emotes you would like to add from your library.
4. Click on the “Add to Channel” button.

As with FFZ emotes, both the streamer and the viewer have to have the BTTV extension to see and use the emotes in the stream, and only the emotes the streamer has enabled can be seen.

Which Emote Browser Extension is Better?

Most users in the Twitch community will tell you to download both browsers to take advantage of all the benefits of each. Most viewers and streamers are already using some version of both, whether free or paid.

If you only want to download one web extension, the best of the two is BetterTTV because it allows you to see both BTTV and FFZ emotes in your chat. BTTV also has more features to elevate your Twitch experience.

You can try out only having one web extension for a time. If you’re not satisfied and you feel like you’re still missing out, you always have the option of downloading the FFZ extension later on.

Conclusion

Now that you know why emotes are showing up as text in your chat and how you can resolve it, you can download those web extensions and even start creating emotes of your own to share on your channel and with the Twitch community.