"🍒⛏️" Emoji Cherry Pick

Choose an emoji and go wild.

• Author: Tuncay D.
• Source: https://github.com/thingsiplay/emojicherrypick
• Releases: https://github.com/thingsiplay/emojicherrypick/releases
• Update Notes: CHANGES
• License: MIT License

Introduction

Are you tired of the preinstalled emoji tools that come or does not come with your distribution? Me neither; here is it anyway.

(Note: The screenshots show you my personal setup of rofi.)

This is a commandline driven frontend and launcher to several established Linux applications, such as rofi, fzf and xclip. The default behavior is to open a rofi search menu to choose an emoji, that is then copied to clipboard, print to stdout and show a notification of chosen emoji.

Features

You can...

• copy emoji to clipboard,
• print emoji to stdout,
• simulate typing emoji to current window,
• show notification of chosen emoji,
• use a rofi menu to choose emoji,
• use alternative filter algorithm for rofi search, such as "regex" or "glob",
• use dmenu instead rofi,
• use fzf to make a selection in the terminal instead,
• choose emoji randomly without an interactive menu (think of the possibilities),
• create a favorites file with your favorite emojis (requires manual text editing),
• keeps track of recently used emojis,
• disable main emoji database and list favorites and recent emojis only,
• ... and more.

Requirements

This program is a Python 3.10 script written for Linux using X11. The below listed external tools are not stricly required to run this program. But they are required (for obvious reasons) the moment their functionality are being used.

Dependencies

• rofi: Github - the default active menu, only required when option --menu is set to rofi (default)
• dmenu: Suckless - alternative menu, only required if --menu is set to dmenu
• pmenu: Github - alternative menu, only required if --menu is set to pmenu
• fzf: Github - alternative menu, only required if --menu is set to fzf
• xclip: Github - used to copy to clipboard, required if option --clipboard is enabled
• xdotool: Github - used to simulate typing on keyboard, required if option --typing is enabled
• libnotify / notify-send: Gnome - used to create notifications, required if option --notify is enabled (in Manjaro provided with package libnotify)

You only need those components which are being used. Most packages should be available in your distributions repository; maybe besides pmenu, which is available as an AUR package on Manjaro/Archlinux.

The default font "Noto Color Emoji" can be changed, but if you are going to leave and use it, you will need following packages:

• noto-fonts-emoji (on Arch, Manjaro)
• fonts-noto-color-emoji (on Debian, Ubuntu)

Single command to install all in one go on Manjaro:

pamac install rofi dmenu pmenu fzf xclip xdotool libnotify noto-fonts-emoji

Installation

The program itself does not require any special installation process, other than the required programs and font. Run the script from any directory you want. Give it the executable bit, rename the script to exclude file extension and put it into a folder that is in the systems $PATH . An installation script "install.sh" is provided, but not required. I recommend to assign a keyboard shortcut to run the program for quick access.

It is a Python 3.10 script, so therefore it requires a decent Python version on the system. If you have an older Python version, then you might want to check the binary release package, which bundles up the script and Python interpreter to create a standalone executable.

Optional: Makefile and PyInstaller (you can ignore this part)

The included "Makefile" is to build the package with the standalone binary. It will create a venv, update stuff in it and run PyInstaller from it.

Usage

usage: emojicherrypick [options]

If you run the application the first time, it will automatically download a small .json database with all smileys. You can prevent it from accessing the web with the option --offline. This process takes about a second or so and is only done if the file does not exist already.

Input (choose an emoji)

There are different menu or filter systems to select an emoji from all loaded files. The default way is the interactive graphical menu with rofi, which has a search or filter bar. But the menu system can be changed to let's say dmenu or even one that works in the terminal itself, let's say to fzf. To set a menu system (also called engine), use the option --menu. At default the selected emoji will be saved in a history file and loaded to top of menu next time.

Output

Once a selection is made, then the program goes into next step to output the selection. Normally no output is done and you have to use one of the options. Unless you run the program entirely without options, in which case the defaults are kicking in (more about in below section). In example -c (short for --clipboard) will cause the program to copy the selected emoji to system clipboard. Option -o (short for --stdout) will cause the program to output to stdout (in example to pipe to other programs).

Default (if no options are given)

If no commandline options are given to the program, then defaults will be used. The defaults are -c -o -n, to output emoji at stdout, save it to clipboard and make a notification. Have in mind, the moment you are activating any option manually, the program will not load the above discussed defaults and you need to activate output manually. The above default options can be changed by setting an environmental variable EMOJICHERRYPICK_DEFAULT with your custom commandline options.

Use emojicherrypick --help to list all options and their brief descriptions.

Examples

$ emojicherrypick --help
$ emojicherrypick -o -i
$ emojicherrypick -ci
$ emojicherrypick --typing 
$ emojicherrypick -M random --clipboard
$ emojicherrypick -g "DejaVu Sans" --clipboard
$ emojicherrypick -@ "regex" -m regex --notify --clipboard 
$ emojicherrypick --norecents -M filter -p "mouse" -i --notify --stdout
$ emojicherrypick -@⭐ --noemojis --norecents -l6 -s32 --typing
$ emojicherrypick -@custom -E -k 0 -f "./custom.cherry" -o

Favorites (custom .cherry files)

You can have a sort of "bookmarks" of your favorite emojis by creating and editing a text file. The program will always show them on top of the menu. The location is at "~/.config/emojicherrypick/favorites.cherry" and has the same format as the "recents.cherry" and "emojis.cherry" format:

EMOJI DESCRIPTION

Everything until first space is considered an emoji and it even works with text only too. An example "favorites.cherry":

🌈 imagination
💩 poop
👉😎👈 this guy
⎇ alternative
[email protected] email

Depending on the application or font, some emojis may be not visible to you.

Additional files in use

These files are created by the script or optionally by the user.

created automatically

• ~/.cache/emojicherrypick/emojis.json
• ~/.cache/emojicherrypick/emojis.cherry
• ~/.cache/emojicherrypick/recents.cherry

"emojis.json" will be downloaded from following Github Gists link "@thingsiplay/emojis.json" which is forked from "@oliveratgithub/emojis.json" , unless the file already exists on the disk. The other files are created automatically by the program.

optional user created data

• ~/.config/emojicherrypick/favorites.cherry

"favorites.cherry" can be a user created list of cherries (emojis) and will be loaded up automatically if present.