Linux emoji picker

emojig

A Linux emoji picker for your terminal or desktop. One Zig binary opens an inline terminal picker or a floating window, with no background service. Try its interactive shell-widget simulator below.

curl -fsSL https://ubunatic.com/emojig/install.sh | sh

Try the interactive picker Get started

Project snapshot · measured 2026-10-26

Key facts

Commits 448Last commit 2026-10-22 Source receipt ↗ Commits · 7 days 5 Source receipt ↗ Tickets closed 8 / 37 Source receipt ↗ Studies 1 Source receipt ↗

12-week commit activity

2026-10-26

Aug 3

Aug 10

Aug 17

Aug 24

Aug 31

Sep 7

Sep 14

Sep 21

Sep 28

Oct 5

Oct 12

Oct 19

View 12-week data table

Week starting	Commits
2026-08-03	20
2026-08-10	19
2026-08-17	0
2026-08-24	1
2026-08-31	7
2026-09-07	1
2026-09-14	16
2026-09-21	0
2026-09-28	0
2026-10-05	4
2026-10-12	0
2026-10-19	5

Key Features

One binary includes 2,249 emojis and opens inline or in a desktop popup.
Search spans multiple words and handles plurals, such as finding “car” for “cars”.
Mouse and keyboard controls, light and dark themes, and clipboard copy.
Crash handlers restore terminal settings if the picker exits unexpectedly.
A browser demo uses the same search rules and is checked against the native picker.

Verified Engineering Milestones

Website search matches the terminal's box-drawing emoji rules (#071, 96e62ec, 658cb7e)
ARM64 release build fix and v0.2.1 release (#070, 0dad63d, fb619ef)
Flicker-free terminal frames (d24100f)

Stack

Zig 0.16 runtime, Go 1.25 tooling and tests, YAML specs, JavaScript simulator, Wayland/X11, terminal emulators

Why emojig

An emoji picker that stays close to your workflow

Desktop emoji pickers usually belong to a particular desktop, while browser based pickers pull you out of the terminal. Emojig is a small Linux app that works inline in your shell or as a floating desktop window, using the same embedded emoji data and search behavior in both modes.

Playground

Try the interactive simulator

Search the emoji set and navigate the simulated shell picker. Type a command and press Ctrl+E to open it; use arrows and Enter to select, or try ? and ?? for the help screens. Open demo in a new tab ↗

Capabilities

Designed for terminal and desktop use

One binary includes 2,249 emojis and opens inline or in a desktop popup.
Search spans multiple words and handles plurals, such as finding “car” for “cars”.
Mouse and keyboard controls, light and dark themes, and clipboard copy.
Crash handlers restore terminal settings if the picker exits unexpectedly.
A browser demo uses the same search rules and is checked against the native picker.

Recorded demos

Terminal and desktop picker

emojig · dark terminal

Open the inline picker, search for an emoji, and insert it into a shell command.

emojig · light terminal

The same terminal workflow using a light theme.

Open the floating picker from a desktop application and paste an emoji.

Screenshot

Search in the terminal

emojig terminal picker showing search results for cat

Install

Get started

Install the latest Linux release with the project installer:

curl -fsSL https://ubunatic.com/emojig/install.sh | sh

The installer selects the supported Linux architecture, downloads the current Codeberg release, and installs emojig and its shell completions under your home directory.

Project details

Stack

Zig 0.16 runtime, Go 1.25 tooling and tests, YAML specs, JavaScript simulator, Wayland/X11, terminal emulators

Milestones

Website search matches the terminal's box-drawing emoji rules (#071, 96e62ec, 658cb7e) · ARM64 release build fix and v0.2.1 release (#070, 0dad63d, fb619ef) · Flicker-free terminal frames (d24100f)

Source

https://codeberg.org/ubunatic/emojig ↗

Architecture

Layer composition

Terminal: TUI, synchronized output, raw mode
Desktop: Linux, Wayland/X11, clipboard
Inference / AI: —
Containers / VM: —
Web: JavaScript simulator

Engineering story

emojig: the story behind the project

An emoji picker sounds like a small interface problem: show a grid, let someone search, copy a character. On Linux, the details quickly multiply. The same picker should fit into an existing terminal session or appear as a desktop popup; ren…

Read the engineering story

Measurement source · 2026-10-26

Verification receipts

Commits: 448 · Last commit 2026-10-22
git -C <repo> rev-list --count HEAD; git -C <repo> rev-list --count --since=<ISO-week-Monday> --until=<ISO-week-Sunday> HEAD; git -C <repo> rev-list --count --since=<measured-date-6-days>T00:00:00 --until=<measured-date>T23:59:59 HEAD; git -C <repo> log -1 --format=%cs HEAD; ls <repo>/issues | grep '^[0-9].*\.md$'; grep -l -E '^\*\*Status\*\*: *(Closed|Done|Resolved|Fixed|Complete)' <repo>/issues/*.md | wc -l; ls <repo>/docs/studies/*.md
repositories behind spec project ids in ~/projects; private-repo filter is a safety net and matches no spec project today; missing repos reported separately; seven calendar days ending on measured date in the measuring host's local timezone; commit counts include all authors and merge commits reachable from HEAD · measured 2026-10-26
Commits · 7 days: 5
git -C <repo> rev-list --count HEAD; git -C <repo> rev-list --count --since=<ISO-week-Monday> --until=<ISO-week-Sunday> HEAD; git -C <repo> rev-list --count --since=<measured-date-6-days>T00:00:00 --until=<measured-date>T23:59:59 HEAD; git -C <repo> log -1 --format=%cs HEAD; ls <repo>/issues | grep '^[0-9].*\.md$'; grep -l -E '^\*\*Status\*\*: *(Closed|Done|Resolved|Fixed|Complete)' <repo>/issues/*.md | wc -l; ls <repo>/docs/studies/*.md
repositories behind spec project ids in ~/projects; private-repo filter is a safety net and matches no spec project today; missing repos reported separately; seven calendar days ending on measured date in the measuring host's local timezone; commit counts include all authors and merge commits reachable from HEAD · measured 2026-10-26
Tickets closed: 8 / 37
git -C <repo> rev-list --count HEAD; git -C <repo> rev-list --count --since=<ISO-week-Monday> --until=<ISO-week-Sunday> HEAD; git -C <repo> rev-list --count --since=<measured-date-6-days>T00:00:00 --until=<measured-date>T23:59:59 HEAD; git -C <repo> log -1 --format=%cs HEAD; ls <repo>/issues | grep '^[0-9].*\.md$'; grep -l -E '^\*\*Status\*\*: *(Closed|Done|Resolved|Fixed|Complete)' <repo>/issues/*.md | wc -l; ls <repo>/docs/studies/*.md
repositories behind spec project ids in ~/projects; private-repo filter is a safety net and matches no spec project today; missing repos reported separately; seven calendar days ending on measured date in the measuring host's local timezone; commit counts include all authors and merge commits reachable from HEAD · measured 2026-10-26
Studies: 1
git -C <repo> rev-list --count HEAD; git -C <repo> rev-list --count --since=<ISO-week-Monday> --until=<ISO-week-Sunday> HEAD; git -C <repo> rev-list --count --since=<measured-date-6-days>T00:00:00 --until=<measured-date>T23:59:59 HEAD; git -C <repo> log -1 --format=%cs HEAD; ls <repo>/issues | grep '^[0-9].*\.md$'; grep -l -E '^\*\*Status\*\*: *(Closed|Done|Resolved|Fixed|Complete)' <repo>/issues/*.md | wc -l; ls <repo>/docs/studies/*.md
repositories behind spec project ids in ~/projects; private-repo filter is a safety net and matches no spec project today; missing repos reported separately; seven calendar days ending on measured date in the measuring host's local timezone; commit counts include all authors and merge commits reachable from HEAD · measured 2026-10-26
12-week commit activity
git rev-list --count --since=<Monday> --until=<Sunday> HEAD
12 latest complete ISO weeks; weekly values are from spec/metrics.yaml.

emojig

Key facts

12-week commit activity

Key Features

Verified Engineering Milestones

Stack

An emoji picker that stays close to your workflow

Try the interactive simulator

Designed for terminal and desktop use

Terminal and desktop picker

Search in the terminal

emojig running in a terminal

Get started

Project details

Layer composition

emojig: the story behind the project