Top tech hacks to celebrate the King’s coronation – including sending a crown emoji

Millions of us will be glued to our televisions on Saturday as we watch King Charles III be coronated at Westminster Abbey.

But this isn’t the only way you can celebrate the occasion using your gadgets.

A new emoji has been added of the St Edward’s Crown – the head piece that will be placed upon the King’s head during the ceremony – that can be accessed on Twitter.

You can also get closer than ever to the sparkly headgear by using augmented reality (AR) to bring it to your living room.

Here, MailOnline reveals the top tech hacks that will help you commemorate the day like no one else in history.

Tweet the coronation emoji

Buckingham Palace has released an official Twitter emoji to celebrate the coronation of King Charles.

The colourful cartoon motif depicts the 17th century jewelled solid gold St Edward’s Crown with purple velvet cap – the regalia which will be used to crown the King on May 6.

It is the first emoji created for a British coronation, with the last crowning – Elizabeth II’s – taking place 70 years ago, before the invention of social media, mobile phones and even the internet. 

To try it yourself, simply navigate to Twitter on either desktop or mobile, and login.

At the top of the page, type out a tweet, and make sure you include one of the following hashtags: #Coronation, #CoronationConcert, #CoronationWeekend and #CoronationBigLunch.

Post your tweet and the new coronation emoji will automatically be added on to the end of it. 

Check out the crown in AR

A new augmented reality (AR) experience shows a digital twin of the St. Edward’s Crown and combines it with your real-life surroundings. 

Using a smartphone or tablet, you can look up close at the gold, diamonds and precious stones and appreciate the 17th century craftsmanship involved. 

With permission from the Royal Household, British production company Atlantic Productions was able to capture a 1:1 scale digital twin of the crown for the smartphone experience in partnership with Sky News. 

To activate the experience, royal fans just has to visit this webpage on a smartphone and tap to place the crown on a ‘non-shiny surface’.

If you’re on a desktop, you can go to the same webpage to bring up a QR code, which you need to then scan with a smartphone. 

After a few taps to select your spot, the digital version of St. Edward’s Crown will appear on a velvet cushion on a table, a floor or even in your back garden. 

Cleverly, the crown appears to get smaller as you move away from the chosen spot, just like any other real-life object. 

Tapping on small circular icons brings up factual titbits about the making and history of the crown, which is made of solid gold and features more than 400 gemstones. 

‘St. Edward’s Crown is made of solid gold and weighs almost 5 pounds (2.07kg),’ the AR tool says. 

‘It is decorated with over 400 precious stones including sapphires, tourmalines, topazes and amethysts, as well as 168 pearls.’ 

Atlantic Productions said a digital twin of Queen Consort Camilla’s crown will be added to the experience once it’s been revealed on May 6.

Camilla’s crown will be a remodeled version of Queen Mary’s Crown, made in 1911 for the British queen Mary of Teck, wife of George V. 

Give your voice assistant a British accent

Make it sound like you’re in Westminster Abbey with the Royal family by giving your voice assistants British accents.

For those using an Amazon Alexa outside the UK, and therefore without British English as the default accent, it is easy to switch over.

To do this, you can say ‘Alexa, change your voice’, and it will begin to cycle through the options. You can then confirm when the sample of a British voice plays. 

Alternatively, you can use the Alexa app. Tap ‘Device’, then the ‘Echo & Alexa’ icon and then select the device you want to change the voice of.

Next, tap the settings gear icon on the upper right and scroll down to select ‘Alexa’s Voice’, before choosing one of the ‘British’ options.

You can do the same with a Google Assistant by going to ‘Assistant Settings’ on the phone, tablet or smart speaker’s companion app.

Tap ‘Assistant Voice’ under ‘All settings’, and choose ‘British Racing Green’ .

Send a celebratory iMessage 

If you have an iPhone, you can send iMessages to your friends with celebratory effects, which may come in useful during the coronation.

When drafting a Message, press and hold the blue arrow on the right of the text bar to reveal four ‘bubble’ text effect options.

These affect the blue bubble that your message appears in on your friend’s device.

However, to access more celebratory options, press ‘Screen’ at the top to get options that will affect their whole screen.

From there you can select ‘Balloons’, which fills the screen with balloons, or ‘Confetti’ which sends a burst of streamers.

‘Celebration’ turns the screen dark before an explosion of gold sparks covers the screen, while ‘Fireworks’ does the same but with fireworks.

Track the royal flypast 

On Saturday afternoon, over 60 aircraft will fly over southern England to celebrate the coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla.

The display is due to pass over Buckingham Palace at 14:30 BST, and will include helicopters, transport aircraft, trainers, fast jets and the Red Arrows.

It will also be visible from areas of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Central London, Surrey, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

If you are not able to catch it live, you can track the planes using a flight tracking app like Flightradar24.

On this app, you can filter the aircraft to just ‘Military and Government’ which on Saturday afternoon will only include those in the procession.

You can also filter by the aircraft ICAO type codes, so typing in those of the aircraft involved in the flypast will ensure they are all that is displayed on the app.

These are; AS32, H47, H64, EH10, LYNX, EC35, C17, A400, A332, C30J, P8, R135, F35, VF35, EUFI, HAWK, F900, E50P, TEX2, G115, DC3, HURI, SASP, SPIT, LANC and PREN.

Another option is to zoom in on London and observe how the display aircraft fit in amongst air traffic.

Try out a King Charles TikTok filter

If you don’t want to let the King have all the crowning glory, you can try out your own glittering headdress through TikTok.

User Julian Vizard has created a filter called ‘Royal’ which puts your face on a royally dressed avatar – complete with a crown – that is marching down a palace hallway.

But if you don’t fancy being King or Queen yourself, the creator has made an alternative, called ‘King in the sky’.

Apply this filter and point your camera to the sky, and a giant, dancing King Charles will appear over the skyline.

If you want to try out either of these, go to make a TikTok video, tap ‘Effects’ in the bottom left hand corner and tap the magnifying glass .

You will then be able to search for these, and a host of other fun, coronation-themed filters.