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.