After nearly three years of development (it takes time to make up one’s mind) Firefox for Linux users can now enjoy seamless emoji insertion using the native GTK emoji chooser. This long-requested feature, implemented in
Firefox 150 (recent Beta), brings a more integrated experience for Linux users who want to add emojis to their web content.
Starting with Firefox 150, the native Gtk emoji picker can be invoked directly within Firefox. This means you can insert emojis into text fields, comment boxes, social media posts, and any other web input using the same interface you’re already familiar with from other GTK applications.
How to use it
Using the emoji picker is simple and follows standard GTK conventions:
- Click into any text input field on a webpage
- Press Ctrl+. (Control + period) or Ctrl+; (Control + semicolon)
- The native GTK emoji chooser will appear
- Select your emoji, and it will be inserted at your cursor position. The picker works seamlessly in both main browser windows and popup windows.
How to disable it
The feature leverages GTK’s built-in GtkEmojiChooser widget, ensuring that the look and feel matches other applications in your desktop environment.
For users who prefer not to use this feature (perhaps due to conflicts with custom keybindings or specific workflows), Firefox provides a preference to disable it. Go to about:config page and set widget.gtk.native-emoji-dialog to false.
Why it took too long?
The native GTK emoji picker implementation uses the GtkEmojiChooser popover built into GTK3. Unlike other GTK dialogs (file picker, print dialog), it can’t be invoked directly in GTK3 – it must be triggered by a key-binding event or signal on GtkEntry or GtkTextView widgets, and the widget has to be visible from GTK’s perspective.
This conflicts with Firefox’s GTK architecture, which doesn’t use GTK widgets directly but instead paints everything itself.
But a solution was found. Firefox already has an invisible GtkEntry widget that’s not attached to any actual window. It’s an offscreen widget used to invoke
key-binding events from GTK input events, like copy/paste and other edit commands. It also receives the ’emoji-insert’ signal after Ctrl+., but normally ignores it since the GtkEntry itself isn’t visible.
I configured the GtkEntry to listen for the ’emoji-insert’ signal. When received, I create a new GtkEntry as a child of the recently focused GtkWindow and redirect the ’emoji-insert’ signal there. The GtkEntry has to be ‘shown’ but remains invisible to users because Firefox paints a wl_subsurface over it.
It also needs to be correctly positioned to show the GtkEmojiChooser in the right location, and connected to other signals like ‘insert_text’ to retrieve the selected emoji. Thanks to Emilio Cobos Álvarez and Masayuki Nakano for their helpful hints on text processing and positioning!