recently i was wondering what's the best way to type in emoji under linux. some key bindings would be nice, to the common ones… and it turned out that using Wayland and sway DM it's very easy! :)
1st we need a script that's using wtype to simulate inserting characters from keyboard. e.g.:
#!/bin/bash set -euo pipefail for name in "$@" do case "$name" in "cold_swet") wtype "😅" ;; "grimacing") wtype "😬" ;; "grin") wtype "😁" ;; "hushed") wtype "😯" ;; "innocent") wtype "😇" ;; "rotfl") wtype "🤣" ;; "scream") wtype "😱" ;; "skull") wtype "💀" ;; "sunglasses") wtype "😎" ;; "thinking") wtype "🤔" ;; "speak_no_evil") wtype "🙊" ;; "hear_no_evil") wtype "🙉" ;; "see_no_evil") wtype "🙈" ;; "spock") wtype "🖖" ;; "thumbs_up") wtype "👍" ;; "thumbs_down") wtype "👎" ;; "rocket") wtype "🚀" ;; "poo") wtype "💩" ;; "rolling_eyes") wtype "🙄" ;; "fire") wtype "🔥" ;; "snowman") wtype "⛄" ;; *) wtype "?" ;; esac done
then add key bindings to Sway's config (i use right alt, as this is default for inserting polish national characters, too) in ~/.config/sway/config:
[...] # emoji bindsym Mod5+g exec emoji grin bindsym Mod5+shift+g exec emoji grimacing bindsym Mod5+r exec emoji rotfl bindsym Mod5+Shift+r exec emoji rocket bindsym Mod5+p exec emoji spock bindsym Mod5+Shift+p exec emoji poo bindsym Mod5+t exec emoji thinking bindsym Mod5+h exec emoji scream bindsym Mod5+Shift+h exec emoji hushed bindsym Mod5+u exec emoji thumbs_up bindsym Mod5+d exec emoji thumbs_down bindsym Mod5+l exec emoji cold_sweat bindsym Mod5+k exec emoji skull bindsym Mod5+j exec emoji sunglasses bindsym Mod5+i exec emoji innocent bindsym Mod5+y exec emoji rolling_eyes bindsym Mod5+f exec emoji fire bindsym Mod5+w exec emoji snowman [...]
…and off we go! :)
you might have noticed that not all emoji have a binding. that's ok, as you can still use the script from command line with e.g.: emoji fire and you get your character inserted where needed! :)
also a note – while in theory you could put wtype directly to Sway's config, it's make it harder to read, as there are no inline comments and in text mode, many emojis are hard to read or do not show at all (i.e. just a hex code).