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 16 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++ |
| Smile | Emoji picker with custom tags support |
| Emote | Written in GTK3, the program is lightweight and stays out of your way |
| Emoji Mart | Modern emoji picker |
| 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 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 |
| Emojify | Lightweight, native emoji picker |
| HyprEmoji | Modern emoji picker for Hyprland |
| Carmenta | Emoji picker for Linux desktops built with Rust, GTK4 and libadwaita |
We cover terminal-based emoji tools in this article.
This article has been updated to reflect the changes outlined in our recent announcement.
 LinuxLinks helps you discover the best free and open source software for Linux. Explore our extensive collection of recommended applications, including alternatives to popular proprietary software.We also publish software reviews, Linux tutorials, hardware reviews, free programming books and articles covering the wider open source community. Browse our Linux resources to discover more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application we haven't covered? Suggest a program for inclusion. Has your software been featured on LinuxLinks? Display one of our Featured on LinuxLinks badges on your website or GitHub README. |
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.