Why is there no built in emoji picker in UIKit? Same reason as why there is no calculator app in iPadOS? Perhaps. But should we just eat up Craig's laziness? Not this time.
Behold: UIEmojiPicker Elegant Emoji Picker.
P.S: Apple, you have my contacts, reach out.
Elegant Emoji Picker is a configurable, simple to use, even more simple to impement, and beautiful (subjectively) emoji picker for iOS, iPadOS, and MacCatalyst (iOS preview, MacCatalyst preview).
Elegant Emoji Picker is available via the Swift Package Manager.
With your Xcode project open, go to File β Add Packages, enter the address below into the search field and click "Add Package".
https://github.com/Finalet/Elegant-Emoji-Picker
Afterwards, import ElegantEmojiPicker
module where you want to use it.
import ElegantEmojiPicker
ElegantPickerView
is the main view controller, which interacts with you through a delegate protocol ElegantEmojiPickerDelegate
. Conform to the protocol and present ElegantPickerView
when you want to offer emoji selection like so:
func PresentEmojiPicker () {
let picker = ElegantEmojiPicker(delegate: self)
self.present(picker, animated: true)
}
Implement the required delegate method emojiPicker (_: didSelectEmoji :)
to recieve user's selection. This function is called as soon as the user picks an emoji and passes an optinal emoji: Emoji?
variable. emoji
is nil when the users "resets" selection, meaning they used to have an emoji which they now want to remove.
func emojiPicker(_ picker: ElegantEmojiPicker, didSelectEmoji emoji: Emoji?) {
guard let emoji = emoji else { return }
uiLabel.text = emoji.emoji
}
It is that easy. If simply offering emojis is all your soul desires, we are done. But if you are a more intricate type of coder and want more control, keep on readin'.
Pass the ElegantConfiguration
struct to the ElegantEmojiPicker
initializer to configure the UI and behaviour of the emoji picker.
let config = ElegantConfiguration(showRandom: false, showReset: false, defaultSkinTone: .Light)
let picker = ElegantEmojiPicker(delegate: self, configuration: config)
viewController.present(picker, animated: true)
showSearch
Show or hide search barshowRandom
Show or hide "Random" buttonshowReset
Show or hide "Reset" buttonshowClose
Show or hide "Close" buttonshowToolbar
Show or hide built-in categories toolbarsupportsPreview
Allow or disallow previewing emojis with long-presscategories
Which default emoji categories to offer userssupportsSkinTones
Allow or disallow selecting emojis skin tone with long-presspersistSkinTones
Save or forget user's skin tone selection for each emoji between sessions.defaultSkinTone
Optional skin tone to use as default. Default value is nil
, meaning standard yellow emojis will be used.If you want to provide your own list of emojis to users, implement the emojiPicker(_: loadEmojiSections : withConfiguration : withLocalization)
delegate method and return an array of sections containing emojis [EmojiSection]
. You can use a static method ElegantEmojiPicker.getAllEmoji()
to retrieve all existing emojis or ElegantEmojiPicker.getDefaultEmojiSections()
to get all emojis categorized by default sections.
EmojiSection
one section containing emojis, like "Smileys & Emotion" or "People & Body".
title
Displayed section titleicon
Displayed section icon (used in the built-in toolbar). Optional.emojis
Emojis contained in this sectionfunc emojiPicker(_ picker: ElegantEmojiPicker, loadEmojiSections withConfiguration: ElegantConfiguration, _ withLocalization: ElegantLocalization) -> [EmojiSection] {
let allEmojis = ElegantEmojiPicker.getAllEmoji()
let politeEmojis = allEmojis.filter({
$0.emoji == "π" ||
$0.emoji == "π" ||
$0.emoji == "π€¬"
})
return [EmojiSection(title: "Politeness", icon: UIImage(systemName: "heart"), emojis: politeEmojis)]
}
picker
Picker view that is asking the delegate for emojis.withConfiguration
Configuration used to for this emoji picker. Default method uses it to process skin tones, sections, and more.withLocalization
The localization used for this emoji picker. Default method uses it to provide localized section titles.You can provide texts for all on screen labels by passing the ElegantLocalization
struct to the ElegantEmojiPicker
initializer.
let localization = ElegantLocalization(searchFieldPlaceholder: "Π§Π΅ Π½Π°Π΄ΠΎ", randomButtonTitle: "Π₯Π· Π³ΠΎ ΡΠ°Π½Π΄ΠΎΠΌ")
let picker = ElegantEmojiPicker(delegate: self, localization: localization)
viewController.present(picker, animated: true)
searchFieldPlaceholder
Placeholder text for the search barsearchResultsTitle
Title text shown when presenting users with emoji search resultssearchResultsEmptyTitle
Title text shown when search results are emptyrandomButtonTitle
Title for the button that selects a random emojiemojiCategoryTitles
Dictionary of titles for default emoji categories, like "Smileys & Emotion", "People & Body", and so on.Explore the Demo project for reference on what Elegant Emoji Picker is capable of or how to implement it. That said, the library is comically simple, so you should not have any trouble yourself.
If you want to see the picker live on the App Store, check out Finale To Do. This sentence was sponsored by #shamelessplug.
I have no idea what I am doing. Send help. How do git contributions work? The fuck if I know. Just don't do anything stupid and we will figure this out.