KDE Plasma desktop users will soon find it easier to browse and enter emoji characters in Qt-based apps.
A brand new emoji picker tool is currently in development for KDE Plasma 5.18. This smorgasbord of smilies will be accessible through a meta + . key binding (one assumes ‘meta’ is KDE speak for the super key, but you may want to check).
And below is a currently glimpse at what the glyph selection palette currently looks like:
Pretty neat, huh?
KDE developer Nate Grahams says this feature will continue to be refined and developed ahead of the KDE Plasma 5.18 release, due sometime early next year.
Emoji pickers aren’t exclusive to KDE Plasma, mind.
GNOME Shell 3.28 (and up) makes it easy to use emoji on Ubuntu and other Linux distros through a native GTK emoji picker. This can be opened in compatible text fields of GTK apps (it may have broader support than that, but it rarely works for me when I try it 💁🏻♂️).
To access the GNOME emoji picker use the right click > enter emoji option:
Like KDE’s upcoming utility it’s also possible to open the GTK emoji picker (again, when a valid text field in a GTK app has focus) using a keyboard shortcut — but I can never get it to work!
Back to Plasma and this is just one of a number of planned features for Plasma 5.18 — let me know which ones you’re the most pumped for in the comments section below!