Ondrej Holzman I've known about the handy Rocket app for quite some time, but never really felt the need to download it. But I started using emoji more and more, and you can be sure that after a while you will stop having fun typing such emoticons on a Mac. So I ended up pulling Rocket as a rescue and I did well.
If you want to insert an emoji on a Mac, you have to bring up the system menu, the first problem with which is that many users do not even know where it is hidden. Who for short CTRL + CMD + Spacebar he knows, he knows that this will bring up a menu of emoticons and symbols similar to the one in iOS.
At the top you have the 32 most used emojis and then scroll down through the classic categories. However, the biggest problem with this system menu is that it does not work as ideally as it should. Unlike iOS, it is positive that you can search in emoji, which is faster, but the whole experience of adding emoji to text or anywhere else is not always so smooth.
It often happens to me that the emoji palette doesn't want to show at all or takes too long to load, but the most frustrating thing is when you choose yours from a wide selection of emoticons, click on it and the menu immediately rotates to a different position and a completely different image is selected and inserted.
I don't know if all Macs behave this way, but for me it was a definite reason to try Rocket. And so now I am free from these problems and I can easily insert emoji everywhere on my Mac. Anyone who uses Slack, for example, will be familiar with Rocket's operating principle. The point is that you don't need to bring up the system palette to insert an emoji, but you just type, for example, a colon and continue typing the name of the emoji.
So if you write : smile, a Rocket menu with laughing emojis will automatically pop up behind your cursor. Two things are important to mention here: Rocket doesn't have to trigger just colons, but actually any character. Given the usage, however, a colon or an underscore is recommended. The second thing is the fact that Rocket does not know the Czech emoji names, so you have to write in English.
However, this may not be too much of a problem. You only need to know the basic words and you can easily find any image. As soon as you start writing the word after the selected character, the corresponding emoji will automatically appear, so you don't even have to write the whole name, you can use the arrows or the cursor to select the desired emoticon in the menu and insert it.
It is on this principle that embedding in the Slack application works, and others are already learning it. With Rocket, you can get that kind of easy emoji insertion system-wide, setting which apps it doesn't activate in Rocket's settings. You just need to allow Rocket access within the framework for it to work properly Security and Privacy > Privacy > Disclosure.
The whole thing may seem like banality to some, and many certainly do not use any emoji, but for those who, for example, liked the images in the messages on the iPhone, they can find in Rocket a good helper to easily enrich their texts also on the Mac. According to Rocket developer Matthew Palmer, who conducted research on the topic, about half of users don't use emoji at all on the Mac because of less accessibility.
Rocket can quickly search and insert emoji completely free and you can download it here. In addition, if you donate $5 to the developer, you will get a full license, which includes inserting your own emoji and GIFs, and you can then easily insert them anywhere using Rocket.
CTRL+CMD+SPACE works fine for me???
On Mac, I only use it in messages and shortcuts like :-) :-D also work well there.
After all, something similar is supported by the OS itself. I set up some emoji shortcuts on my iPhone and it synced via iCloud. It's probably not that versatile, but I don't need to install the app.