I’m on KDE Plasma using wayland, and I’m annoyed with KDE’s emoji picker. Well, the interface is fine, I just want emojis to immediately be pasted into the text field that was in focus when I used the shortcut to launch the emoji picker. Basically I want the behavior to be as close to the Windows emoji picker as possible.

Does anyone know of an alternative that allows me to quickly type 2 different emojis in succession? Bonus points when it’s easily available on arch.

  • @[email protected]
    9•2 days ago

    I use ibus-uniemoji, and I settled with this years ago after trying to find a similar replacement coming from Windows as you.

    After install just set up a keyboard shortcut to quickly change between input languages, and you can just type your emojis effortlessly. As it’s an input method it doesn’t matter what DE you use. Demo gif from Github:

    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/salty-horse/ibus-uniemoji/refs/heads/master/example.gif

    • silly goose meekahOP
      2•2 days ago

      This is definitely a good contender. I do already use 2 different keyboard layouts regularly, so I think it might get annoying when I’m trying to switch between those two. I’ll give it a go though, thank you!

  • @[email protected]
    3•2 days ago

    Not exactly what you may be looking for, but one of the first things I set up in Linux is the “Compose” key. Sun keyboards in the 90’s had a dedicated Compose key, and you can enable the functionality still. I usually set it to Right Alt.

    The Compose key is kind of like an extended shift key, so ‘Compose’ + “c” + “/” for example will give you “¢”.

    The key combinations and characters can be edited in a config file (can’t remember off the top of my head).

    Not as versatile and an “Emoji picker”, but allows quick insertion of Unicode glyphs into text. Useful for ¢£€¥™×° type characters.

    • silly goose meekahOP
      4•2 days ago

      hmm, might be worth my while to put my most used emojis into that config file… thanks for the input!

      • @[email protected]
        2•2 days ago

        That’s exactly why I always enable the Compose key. It’s the fastest and easiest way to just type a variety of Unicode glyphs. The key combinations trend to be intuitive as well.

        There’s a good chance the default config file will have a pretty decent selection. Although I have edited the config in the past, I haven’t done it under KDE. The KDE article on setting up the compose key seems to say that KDE uses a different config file anyways.

        Turning on the Compose key is pretty straightforward as I recall, just another setting under Keyboard settings. Finding that config file is still useful if you can’t guess the right combo for your desired glyph.

        Very useful for using character common in math and science.

        • silly goose meekahOP
          2•2 days ago

          Thanks for the link! I couldn’t get ibus-uniemoji to work properly, so I’ll probably have to settle for this.