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.
Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks chart. We only feature open source software here.
Let’s explore the 13 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 |
| Xmoji | Plain X11 emoji keyboard |
| 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.
This article has been revamped in line with our recent announcement.
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |