Álvaro Ramírez

So, I totally missed the macOS native emoji picker is actually supported out of the box 😭. Thanks to redditor u/hrabannixlisp who pointed me in the right direction.

ns-do-show-character-palette is bound to C-s-SPC by default, which didn't work for me as I use (setq mac-command-modifier 'meta), that is, ⌘ as meta modifier.

While I won't be giving up (setq mac-command-modifier 'meta), I can certainly use ns-do-show-character-palette via M-x or a different binding. Thank you u/hrabannixlisp!

A couple of years ago, I was delighted to discover a macOS freebie for us Emacs users. Newer Macbook models started shipping with a globe/🌐 key, which summons the macOS native emoji picker. Pressing this key in Emacs works as you'd expect (no config required 🎉).

While I seldom use emojis, the globe key worked great for me until I started using an external keyboard, which didn't have this magical key. The potential solutions I came across suggest either reprogramming the keyboard or using the likes of Karabiner-Elements to map other keys to an alternate shortcut: Ctrl-⌘-SPC. As far as I can tell, this is the only other available shortcut (please reach out if otherwise). Not a great option (it conflicts with Emacs's mark-sexp). Not that I'd be super keen to lose this mark command, but even unbinding doesn't seem of much help.

While we have Emacs packages available for different emoji-picking experiences, I was keen on maintaining that native experience I enjoyed before. I nearly gave up on the matter until I remembered we have at least one more tool in the Emacs toolbox: dynamic modules. Thanks to Valeriy Savchenko's emacs-swift-module, we can leverage Swift to integrate native macOS experiences.

With that in mind, I set out to find the relevant macOS API, which turned out to be a lovely one-liner:

NSApp.orderFrontCharacterPalette(nil)

Let's bring it into Emacs via emacs-swift-module's infrastructure:

try env.defun(
  "macos-module--show-emoji-picker",
  with: "Show emoji picker (macOS module implementation)."
) { (env: Environment) in
  NSApp.orderFrontCharacterPalette(nil)
}

In theory, this is all we need. We can M-x eval-expression (macos-module--show-emoji-picker) and the picker simply pops up. I haven't worked out how define an interactive command from emacs-swift-module just yet, so for now I'll just wrap with a little elisp:

(defun macos-show-emoji-picker ()
  "Show macOS emoji picker."
  (interactive)
  (macos-module--show-emoji-picker))

And with that, we got our native macoOS emoji picker back at our fingertips:

While the dedicated globe key just worked without configuration, it required newer hardware. This new approach works on older Macbooks too. Since it's an interactive command, you can optionally bind to your preferred keys.

Having said all that, you may have noticed a brief lag during insertion. I haven't worked out the source, but since I rarely use emojis, this will have to do for now. If you have a better macOS alternative working on external keyboards, I'd love to hear about it!

I've added macos-show-emoji-picker to EmacsMacOSModule, a tiny repo I've used to experiment with emacs-swift-module. You can find EmacsMacOSModule on GitHub.

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