Better keyboard support for the emoji picker in Plasma

Brainstorm
1

Hey everyone,

In Plasma 5 in was possible to navigate the emoji picker using only the keyboard (even through it could have been a lot more obvious which emoji you were about to pick)
But now in Plasma 6, it is no longer possible to use the arrow keys to move between the emojis.

Are there any plans to make the emoji picker in KDE Plasma more keyboard friendly?
Because it is really a workflow breaker having to use the mouse when I need/want an emoji, since I am normally already typing.

For now, I switched to the wofi-emoji from sway, but I would really love to switch back if we can get better keyboard navigation

5 Likes
2

I’d like to +1 this request as I too used to use the keyboard navigation feature as well as closing with escape afterwards

3 Likes
3

just tried wofi-emoji, don’t find it much better than Emoji Selector. no mouse needed though

a good emoji picker must have the keyboard control and ability to pick a string of emojis, put them all in the buffer at once, not only 1 last pressed

1 Like
4

Hi - I just tried the Emoji Selector by pressing Super + ., and was able to navigate purely by keyboard, using Tab to move back and forth between the emoji view and the categories on the left, the arrow keys to pick an emoji and Enter to copy one to the clipboard - so I suspect the keyboard support has improved since this topic was first opened?

Do you have thoughts on how a feature would work to add to a buffer within the app? The “press enter to copy” workflow feels pretty intuitive to me, so I don’t know what key commands would feel natural to use for adding to a temporary string vs. immediately copying. (I’m also not a frequent emoji user outside of what Discourse automatically does when I type an emoticon :slight_smile: )

1 Like
5

Yes, it seems that the highlighting is also fixed, and the keyboard navigation have been mostly fixed (if I open emoji picker and press tab I also have to press enter to be able to navigate with the arrow-keys again, not obvious. I would suggest having tab switch menu immediately without the need for enter) :grin:
I however, have gotten use to using a modified version of wofi-emoji, so I am probably gonna stick with that one, because wofi-emoji closes when I have selected the emoji, which is not the option with the emoji picker in Plasma.

I think in general the emoji picker in Plasma could benefit from a few configuring option, like:

  • should be emoji picker close after hitting selecting an emoji - option: Select and close
  • shortcut like shift + enter to queue emojies like @Soaron suggested
  • options to configure shortcuts
  • Option to just insert the emoji into the currently active window instead of copy it to the clipboard. Example one select the emoji, the emoji picker window closes, the previous application window becomes active again and the emoji picker “writes the emoji” to the active window (don’t know if this is possible in wayland)
2 Likes
6

select and close would be really valuable to me. :slightly_smiling_face: