It would be really nice if the emoji picker got renamed to something like symbols & emoji picker, and a tabbed interface allowed to search by category (emoji vs symbol), and copy to the clipboard not just emojis, but also Unicode symbols. It would make life SO much easier, especially for folks like me that don't have a NumPad neither on my laptop nor on my external keyboard (compact/travel format). Thanks!
This is basically the use case for KCharSelect, which provides symbols. That said, you're not the first person to advocate essentially merging them together to provide both bits of functionality, so maybe it's worth considering.
Hi Nate, thanks for commenting on this. Personally I didn't know about KCharSelect, and since I'm typing this from mobile I haven't even checked yet if it's installed by my distro. The name is also a bit obscure, which I think further harms discoverability. Having a one stop shop for emojis and special chars IMO would also avoid having users memorize yet another keyboard shortcut. KDE has plenty and we love them, but there's only so many one can remember at any time, and IMO both emoji and special chars are things users may need to insert quickly (i.e. with a shortcut) without having to search for apps in the launcher. I really hope that a unified UI can be made and invoked with Meta dot :)
As someone who regularly enters both emoji and special characters/symbols, I can say that using KCharSelect is such a chore that just using online search to find the special character/symbol I need and copy/pasting it is a lot faster. If both the emoji selector and KCharSelect could be merged/unified (I think Windows does this? macOS perhaps as well?), it would definitely make my life a little easier. Perhaps it could also reduce the maintenance burden? KCharSelect also feels a bit outdated and obtuse, but that could just be me.
+1 vote for merging the two apps. Would be a big improvement IMO.