The internet has rapidly transformed the way we communicate. Since body language and verbal tone are not conveyed in text messages or e-mails, we’ve developed alternate ways to convey nuanced meaning. The most prominent change to our online style has been the addition of two new-age hieroglyphic languages: emoticons and emoji.
Emoji originated from the smiley, which first evolved into emoticons, followed by emoji and stickers in recent years. Smiley first appeared in the 1960s and is regarded as the first expression symbols. Smiley is a yellow face with two dots for eyes and a wide grin which is printed on buttons, brooches, and t-shirts.
An emoji is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The main function of emoji is to provide emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversation.
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Let’s explore the 12 GUI emoji tools. For each application we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources.
| GUI Emoji Pickers | |
|---|---|
| Feeling Finder | Simple but very effective emoji picker written in Dart and C++ |
| Emote | Written in GTK3, the program is lightweight and stays out of your way |
| Smile | Emoji picker with custom tags support |
| jome | Provides most of the interesting emojis of Emoji 13.1 |
| Emoji Picker | Part of ibus-typing-booster, completion input method for faster typing |
| Emoji Mart | Modern emoji picker |
| Emoji Selector | GNOME extension provides a searchable popup menu with most emojis |
| Flemozi | Simple, fast and lightweight emoji picker |
| wofi-emoji | Simple emoji selector for Wayland using wofi |
| bemoji | Emoji picker that remembers your favorites |
| x11-emoji-picker | Dialog / emoji picker inspired by the Windows 10 emoji picker |
| Mingle | Play with Google’s Emoji Kitchen |
We cover terminal-based emoji tools in this article.
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