1. Download emojiSubstitutions.plist (make sure it has the extension .plist)
2. Open System Preferences and navigate to Keyboard > Text
3. Drag the emojiSubstitutions.plist to the list of substitutions to add them
4. Type something like :boom: or :blackbox: and hit Space after! 💥⬛️

Thanks to the fantastic work of rael9 Macmoji now has a script for generating other template files (Maestro, Alfred, etc) from the latest emoji substitutions list. If you add emoji substitutions to the base .plist simply run python2 scripts/update-output.py (python3 will fail) from the scripts directory and the various outputs based on the templates in templates/* will be generated and placed in the base directory. Creating new templates is easy and highly encouraged!

If you'd prefer to use Keyboard Maestro to handle the substitutions, import the emojis-km6.kmmacros file in the Keyboard Maestro Editor.

(This macro was created and tested using version 6. It has not been tested with other versions.)

If you'd prefer to import these shortcuts with Alfred as Snippets just drag the .alfredsnippets into Alfred's Snippet preferences!

There used to be a CLI for installing Macmoji but it was brittle and tended to break with every other Mac OS version. I wasn't able to get it working for Big Sur and the drag/drop installation still works quite well so that is the only way to install it at this time!

Yep! Macmoji substitutions are ordinary text substitutions. Double click an entry to change it; highlight and hit delete to remove it. To highlight multiple substitutions select one and then while holding Shift select another. You can always add your own too of course!

Some fun recommendations:

Well it's what Slack/GitHub/Trello does and it prevents macOS's autocomplete from being too aggressive when you're just trying to type normal sentences like, "ghost bananas are cool." 👻🍌🆒

Type your skin-tonable emoji, then type :skin-tone-3: (any number 1-5) to add the skintone. They should combine!

Let me know in the issues orrr file a pull request!

Yep! Highlight and drag out the ones you want to back-up or share and you'll get a neat little .plist. Drag them back in and only the unique ones will be added.

Yeah it's a bummer. Chrome bypasses the system's autocomplete (and a few other things), but a passable work around is to open Spotlight (Cmd + Space) type your emojis there, copy, paste, and you're good to go! 👍

Keyboard text substitutions sync across iCloud. I haven't found a way to disable it short of removing the substitutions and iOS seems to ignore colons 🤕. I will update this if I learn of a solution.

No clue. Beats me. Have a hunch why? I'd love to hear it!

Looking to update to the latest release? The best way to update is to remove all previously added substitutions, then drag in the .plist again (hold Shift to select all the colon clad substitutions). Tip: You can always back-up substitutions by selecting and dragging them out of the list!