I wanted to get some more fun within IOS push notifications and with this method it is possible to send emoticons within the notification.
First of all find your emoticon on this page: https://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode
When you find the right emoticon; press the link in the Unicode column.
Write down the Surrogates code, for examle: D83D DE01
Within Home Assistant use the following syntax in your message:
{{ "\uD83D\uDE01" }}
😁
For Telegram notifications is some easier, just copy past from here: https://emojipedia.org/telegram/
Edit: in the mean time user ‘Golles’ noted me that you can just copy and paste the emoticon into the yaml code, which should work fine in most cases. If it doesn’t, you can use this manual.