A tiny, fast, minimal emoji picker for Windows. Press a hotkey, type to search, press Enter — the emoji is typed straight into whatever app you were in.
- Global hotkey (default
Ctrl+;, configurable, multiple hotkeys allowed) opens a picker next to your text caret. - Search by name, shortcode, or keyword — typing
heart,party, orroflfilters instantly. - Most-used first — a 14-day time-decayed score floats your recent picks to the top.
- Custom shortcodes — map any text (
shrug,hbd, whatever) to any Unicode emoji. - Custom image "emojis" — drop in your own PNGs and paste them as images into Word/Outlook/Slack/Discord/etc.
- Clipboard-safe. Unicode emojis are typed directly via the Windows
KEYEVENTF_UNICODEkeystroke — your clipboard is never touched. Image pastes restore your clipboard immediately after. - Under 1 MB of user-visible data, a single portable .exe, and it lives quietly in the tray.
- Grab
SmartEmoji.exefrom the latest release. - Put it anywhere you like. Double-click it.
- A tray icon appears. Right-click it → Run at startup if you want it every login.
Nothing to install, no admin rights, no telemetry.
Requires Python 3.11+ on Windows.
git clone https://github.com/Claxon/SmartEmoji.git
cd SmartEmoji
install.bat # creates .venv, installs PySide6
run.bat # starts the app (no console window)
| Action | Key |
|---|---|
| Open picker | Ctrl+; (configurable) |
| Search | just type |
| Move selection | ←/→/↑/↓ or Tab |
| Insert emoji | Enter or click |
| Cancel | Esc, or click outside the popup |
Right-click the tray icon → Settings… for:
- Hotkeys — add/remove any Ctrl/Alt/Shift/Win + key combination.
- Shortcodes — map your own text to a Unicode emoji (e.g.
party→ 🎉). - Images — add your own PNGs/JPGs/GIFs as searchable image emojis.
- General — grid columns, grid rows (go down to 1 for a single-row compact picker), toggle the name/shortcode caption, toggle "Run at startup".
Unlike emoji pickers that always paste via Ctrl+V, SmartEmoji types each Unicode emoji as a KEYEVENTF_UNICODE keystroke — the same mechanism Windows uses for dead-keys and IME. Three consequences:
- Your clipboard stays untouched.
- It works in edit controls that re-select their contents on focus (URL bars, search boxes) — Ctrl+V paste tools overwrite those selections;
KEYEVENTF_UNICODEjust appends at the caret. - Emojis outside the Basic Multilingual Plane (most of them) are sent as UTF-16 surrogate pairs, which is what Windows expects.
Image emojis are the exception — images have to go through the clipboard, but the previous clipboard contents are snapshotted first and restored after a short delay.
pip install pyinstaller
pyinstaller --onefile --windowed --noconfirm --name SmartEmoji ^
--add-data "assets/emojis.json;assets" main.py
Output: dist/SmartEmoji.exe.
The bundled dataset is derived from muan/emojilib and covers ~1850 Unicode emojis.
python scripts/build_emojis.py
Fetches the latest emojilib data, re-ranks by a hand-curated popularity list, writes assets/emojis.json.
Windows has a built-in picker at Win+. but it's slow, loses your selection every time, doesn't support custom shortcodes, can't hold your own images, and can't be rebound. SmartEmoji is ~1500 lines of Python that fixes all of those.
MIT.