Pybites Emoji Searcher

I have been googling emojis and manually copying them to my clipboard.

Except for Slack + GitHub, there the : + autocomplete works great. For other tools, for example Facebook or plain blog / email writing, I needed a better way.

So here is a tool to look up emojis by text from the command line and automatically copy matching ones to the clipboard (using the awesome pyperclip tool).

By default it takes the first match in case there are multiple matching emojis. However if you append a dot (.) to a word you get to choose which emoji gets copied. You can also use a .preferences file to store overriding emojis or ones this tool does not provide.

I hope you enjoy this tool and don't hesitate to reach out to me by email: bob@pybit.es or just open an issue / open a PR if you see any opportunity for improvements.

How to install and run it

$ git clone git@github.com:bbelderbos/emojisearcher.git
$ cd emojisearcher
$ python3.10 -m venv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
(venv) $ pip install -r requirements.txt

# or in one command
$ make setup

# search from cli
(venv) $ python -m emojisearcher.script bicep
Copied 💪 to clipboard

(venv) $ python -m emojisearcher.script snake
Copied 🐍 to clipboard

(venv) $ python -m emojisearcher.script tada
Copied 🎉 to clipboard

# search interactively (specially useful if there are multiple matches, you can choose)

(venv) $ python -m emojisearcher.script

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type one or more emoji related words ...
End a word with a . if you want to select an emoji if there are multiple
matches, otherwise the first match will be picked. Type 'q' to exit.
> snake
Copied 🐍 to clipboard

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type one or more emoji related words ...
End a word with a . if you want to select an emoji if there are multiple
matches, otherwise the first match will be picked. Type 'q' to exit.
> grin
Copied 😺 to clipboard

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type one or more emoji related words ...
End a word with a . if you want to select an emoji if there are multiple
matches, otherwise the first match will be picked. Type 'q' to exit.
> grin.
1 😺
2 😸
3 😀
4 😃
5 😄
6 😅
7 😆
8 😀
9 😁
Select the number of the emoji you want: 4
Copied 😃 to clipboard

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type one or more emoji related words ...
End a word with a . if you want to select an emoji if there are multiple
matches, otherwise the first match will be picked. Type 'q' to exit.
> q
Bye

Ease of use: make a shell alias

Using a shell alias can be really convenient for this (assuming you have the project cloned in ~/code):

# .zshrc
function emo {
    # subshell so you don't stay in the virtual env after running it
    (cd $HOME/code/emojisearcher && source venv/bin/activate && python -m emojisearcher.script "$@")
}

$ source ~/.zshrc
$ emo snake
Copied 🐍 to clipboard

# or get multiple emojis at once
$ emo snake bicep tada heart fire
Copied 🐍 💪 🎉 💓 🔥 to clipboard

After sourcing your .zshrc you can now get emojis copied to your clipboard fast using emo bicep, emo tada etc.

Preferred emojis

This section uses the shell alias I created in the previous step.

Sometimes you don't get a match:

$ emo ninja
No matches for ninja

Or you get way too many:

$ emo heart.
1 💓
2 🖤
...
...
35 😻
36 😍
Select the number of the emoji you want: 36
Copied 😍 to clipboard

And some don't work (not sure why yet ...):

$ emo question
Copied  to clipboard

Since 0.6.0 you can create a .preferences file to create a mapping of missing / preferred emojis which will take precedence.

You can create this file in the root folder of the project or use the EMOJI_PREFERENCES environment variable to store it somewhere else:

$ export EMOJI_PREFERENCES=/Users/bbelderbos/.emoji_preferences

Let's look at this in action. Normally the tool would work like this:

$ emo heart
Copied 💓 to clipboard
$ emo cool
Copied 🆒 to clipboard

Say you added a preferences file like this:

$ cat .preferences
ninja:🥷  # missing (and much needed)
# overrides
eyes:😍  # replaces default 😁
heart:❤️   # replaces default 💓
hearts:💕  # replaces default 💞
# easier to remember
idea:💡  # also matches "bulb"
# trying to fix non-matching emojis
bliksem:⚡️  # this is Dutch
faster:🏃

Note that you can use (inline) comments.

Now with the preferences in place your shiny new emojis kick in first 🎉

$ emo heart
Copied ❤️ to clipboard

(no more 💓)

$ emo cool
Copied 😎 to clipboard

(no more 🆒)

Enjoy!

Running the tests and other tools

(venv) $ pytest
# or
(venv) $ make cov

# run flake8 and mypy
(venv) $ make lint
(venv) $ make typing

Rich

Originally Around 0.0.5 we started using rich to retrieve a list of emojis, it seems a bit more accurate (e.g. our beloved tada 🎉 emoji was missing!)

OS alternatives

While sharing this On Twitter I learned about other ways to get emojis (thanks Matt Harrison):

• Windows: Windows logo key + . (period)

• Mac: CTRL + CMD + Space

Trying this on Mac, this does require the mouse though and it does not copy the emoji to your clipboard.