Bug 434932

Indeed. very tricky to do, though, since such functionality really requires being an input method, and this is implemented as a tiny standalone app, rather than as an input method.

A low-effort solution might be to implement the app in such a way that:

1. Opening the app leaves you in the search emoji field (so you can search the emoji you want right away)
2. Allowing to change the selected emoji with the keyboard (arrow keys) without losing focus on the search field
3. Copying the selected emoji on <Enter>
4. Having the app close after pressing enter (which should return focus to the app that was being used)


That would result in a workflow:

1. Alt + .
2. Type desired emoji (or select from recent with arrow keys)
3. Press <Enter>
4. Ctrl + v
(important: hands never leave the keyboard)

This would be less disruptive and roughly imitates the way Spectacle works (Print Scr shortcut)

All the functionality needed is already implemented in the app for this work. (minus the fact that the recent emoji view doesn't allow search and seems you can't search the recen emojis at all)

It would be a solution, but there isn't much difference from the current selector. I think, it's better than the current one, but a real input method would be much better.
You could even use a trick: the emoji selector saves the text that's on the clipboard, copies the selected emoji, immediately pastes it where you want it and copies the text that was on the clipboard before.

(In reply to ndev from comment #3)
> It would be a solution, but there isn't much difference from the current
> selector. I think, it's better than the current one, but a real input method
> would be much better.
> You could even use a trick: the emoji selector saves the text that's on the
> clipboard, copies the selected emoji, immediately pastes it where you want
> it and copies the text that was on the clipboard before.

I created this script as a workaround: https://github.com/Drarig29/auto-paste-emoji

Is there any news on this?
The auto-paste emoji should be the default option IMO: I see no reason to not-auto-paste the chosen emoji from the list.

*** Bug 466924 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

A potential workaround could be to accept a custom command to be run when an emoji is selected, which would have the selected emoji passed into it. We could then write our own custom hacky solutions to insert that emoji.

Bumping for support on this. Makes more sense and is how the UX works for other desktop emoji pickers such as on Mac or Windows.

Also meets expected UX on mobile interface, where emoji were popularized. The picker in KDE is great (better than windows in terms of aesthetics imo!) but this one weird quirk makes it cumbersome for more than one emoji 👎 😥 🥺

I am unsure how feasible the following proposal would be:
1. When the emoji-picker starts and we are on Wayland, create a new "virtual keyboard device" [^1]
2. When the user presses on an emoji, the "virtual keyboard device" issues a sequence of key presses which enters the desired emoji [^2]
3. The application exists

For this to work, I used the following assumptions:
[^1]: There exists such a thing as "virtual keyboard devices". IMO sounds reasonable though, right?
[^2]: For all emojis, there exists a sequence of key presses which enters this emoji.

For [^2] I suppose pressing ctrl+shift+u+XYZ (where XYZ is the unicode-codepoint(?) of the emoji) should work at least in Firefox for me. I doubt it all applications will work with that tough...🤔

I had the same idea for a long-ish time now and I would be happy if this would be included.

*** Bug 497770 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 498601 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

It would save so much time if this was finally implemented. Until then we have to look for alternatives such as Espanso.

It could use ydotool and the following command: 
ydotool key 29:1 47:1 47:0 29:0
Where #KEY_LEFTCTRL=29, KEY_V=47

I got here after trying to figure out how to make the emoji picker work like that (coming from Windows). Bummed to see that nothing has happened on this for so long.

I’d like to add a more concrete proposal regarding Plasma + Wayland.

Currently, the Plasma emoji picker only copies the selected emoji to the clipboard.
On Wayland, however, Plasma already has control over text input through
plasmashell, KWin and the text-input protocol.

Proposal:
- Allow the emoji picker to insert the selected emoji directly into the
  currently focused text input when possible (via Wayland text-input),
  instead of only copying to clipboard.
- Keep clipboard copy as a fallback for cases where direct insertion
  is not supported.
- This would match the behavior users expect from Windows (Win + .)
  and macOS, and significantly improve UX for chats and browsers.

From a UX perspective, this feels like something that belongs at the
Plasma / plasmashell level rather than being left to individual applications.

I understand this may require coordination between plasmashell and KWin,
but I believe it would be a worthwhile usability improvement.

Would really appreciate a feature like this soon 🙏 I use the emoji picker daily and this would be a big time saver.

Maybe do both: Copy the selected emoji and paste it at the same time, so it is still in the clipboard, if I want to reuse it... so typing "😂😂😂" would not result into opening the emoji picker three times, but use Ctrl+V for the other two times.

Not expecting any profound fix anytime soon given the age of this issue, I wonder whether it wouldn't be possible to add some quick fixes. What comes to mind, adding to what's already been mentioned above:

- Automatically hide the app window once and emoji has been selected. Given the last one I've been writing in was in focus before, that hopefully should get me back to where I was writing fast enough.
- Make it possible to add a hotkey for quickly hiding the window (like ESC maybe). This would be sufficient to achieve the same goal. Given virtually every KDE application can be configured down to the very last screw, it's surprising that such a setting doesn't already exist.

At the moment I select an emoji and use ALT+F4 to close the window which is /by far/ more clumsy than, in example, this one - https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1162/emoji-selector/ - on GNOME which just works as one would expect this to be in 2026: Press a hotkey, search for emoji (or left/right navigate through the most recent ones), use mouse click to insert into previously edited text. This even works without being in need of a mouse. This is one of my re-occurring top papercuts in KDE Plasma.