Cannot Use Emoji within Browsers

Question

This is probably a really simple fix, but I cannot for the life of me get emoji to work in any browser (Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi) on Ubuntu Desktop 20.04. I can bring up the picker with Ctrl+Alt+E and Ctrl+. in applications such as Text Editor, but not in the applications where I actually use emoji. There is no option to insert them with a right click contextual menu, either.

I've tried to resolve this by:

1. installing the Emote snap from Tom Watsom
2. removing and re-installing the fonts-noto-color-emoji package
3. changing my keyboard to an English layout (it's Japanese by default)
4. giving my dog a much-needed bath

As none of this has worked, I'm clearly missing something ...

Answer 1

• GNOME Epiphany (the Linux port of Safari) is currently the only web browser that supports the native emoji picker. You can install it via Snap or Flatpak.

  

• Alternatively, there are extensions for Firefox, Chrome and Opera that add an emoji picker to the toolbar.

  

Answer 2

You can use Super + ., you should see the letter 'e' pop up underlined.

Enter the name of the emoji you want (ex: thumb), press space once to get the first emoji, and press space twice to get the other emojis available. Press enter when satisfied.

Ex: 👍 (first one available, no choice given) 👎 (hit space twice, chose thumbs down)

Answer 3

I created Cross-Platform Emoji Picker using Electron and it is available for free.

I built this tool for myself because the other Ubuntu options weren't good. Feel free to use it if you want.

It works on Ubuntu and also on Windows and Mac, using the same keyboard shortcut.

Use Ctrl Alt Space to open this app (or ⌃ ⌘ Space on Mac), and then Ctrl V to paste into the browser.

I spent countless hours trying to enable the app to insert an emoji directly into the browser without using the clipboard. But Ubuntu (at least the Wayland version) is locked down, so this is impossible. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But this app is the quickest alternative I know about.

Answer 4

(using ubuntu 23.04)

There is an inbuilt application called "Characters", you can use that to get emojis. No need to install a third party emoji picker.

You can simply press the super key (formerly Windows) and type an emoji name and select the emoji from list.

But some emojis are hard to find by name, so create a shortcut to characters app and look and find suitable one from it.

Steps

1. Create a keyboard shortcut for the app - Ctrl + Shift + ..

2. Open app use Ctrl + F to find emoji. select and copy.

Use native GTK app shortcut Ctrl + . if available