Emoji Search

A small, fast, browser-friendly emoji search library built from Unicode codepoints.

- 🔍 Keyword + hex search
- 🎨 Correct handling of emoji sequences (skin tones, modifiers)
- 🌐 Works in browser, Node, and Bun
- 📦 Zero runtime dependencies
- 🧠 No DOM coupling — bring your own UI

Why this exists

Most emoji libraries are either:

- Huge datasets you don’t need
- UI-opinionated pickers
- Hard to extend or inspect

This library focuses on data + search only:

- You control rendering
- You control UX
- You get predictable results

Installation

npm install @samuelbines/emojis

$3

bun add @samuelbines/emojis

Basic Usage

``ts
import { search } from '@samuelbines/emojis';

const { items: results } = search('waving hand');

results.forEach((e) => {
console.log(e.icon, e.desc);
});
`

$3

Keyword search

`ts
search('hand');
search('skin tone');
search('thumbs up');
`

$3

`ts
search('1F44B'); // waving hand
search('U+1F3FC'); // medium-light skin tone
`

$3

`ts
search('hand', { limit: 20 });
`

$3

Convert hex → emoji

`ts
import { emojiFromHex } from '@samuelbines/emojis';

emojiFromHex(['1F91A', '1F3FC']); // 🤚🏼
`

Convert emoji → hex

`ts
import { hexFromEmoji } from '@sam/emoji-search';

hexFromEmoji('🤚🏼'); // ["1F91A", "1F3FC"]
`

Get emoji by ID

`ts
import { getById } from '@sam/emoji-search';

const emoji = getById(42);
console.log(emoji.icon);
`

EmojiEntry shape

`ts
type EmojiEntry = {
id: number;
icon: string; // "👋🏻"
desc: string; // "waving hand: light skin tone"
keywords: string[];
cps: string[]; // ["1F44B","1F3FB"]
};
`

Browser example

`html




`

Build / Development

The emoji index is generated at build time from emoji.array.json.

`bash
bun run build
`

$3

`bash
npm run build
``

This keeps runtime code small and fast.

Design decisions

- No fuzzy matching (simple includes is predictable)
- No DOM (UI belongs to you)
- No auto skin-tone generation (explicit > magic)
- Precomputed search strings for speed
- No external dev dependancies

$3

You need a full emoji picker UI

You need locale-aware emoji names

You want fuzzy / AI-style matching

This library is intentionally simple.