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Quick Emoji

by Josh Ferrara

System-wide Slack-style emoji completion for Omarchy Quattro.

GitHub

Security review

No obvious issues detected

Deterministic scan — not a security guarantee

None
Risk level
None
Analyzed commit
8ff7730
Scanned
3 weeks ago

No potentially dangerous behavior detected in the analyzed commit.

Automated analysis only — not a security guarantee.

AI advisory review

No obvious issues detected

Language-model assessment · ~deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-latest — advisory only

Low
AI risk level
Low
Recommendation
install
Model
~deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-latest
Analyzed commit
8ff7730
Reviewed
3 weeks ago

This plugin provides emoji completion via Fcitx5. It compiles a C++ addon and installs it into the user's local Fcitx5 directory, then modifies Fcitx5 configuration and themes. The code is open source and appears safe, with no network access or sensitive data handling, but it does execute a build script and modify system configuration, so it carries a low risk.

  • Compiles and installs a native library (quickemoji.so) into the user's local Fcitx5 directory.
  • Modifies Fcitx5 configuration and theme files, with backup and restore on removal.
  • Restarts the Fcitx5 service via systemctl, which may temporarily disrupt input method.
  • Creates a systemd user service and path unit for cleanup on plugin removal.
How this check works

This review combines the deterministic scan (the rule-based results above) with an independent look at the plugin's code by a language model. The model reads a trimmed sample of the repository's files, the manifest, and the README, then gives a plain-language risk level and a recommendation: install (no notable danger), review (look closer first), or avoid (clearly dangerous).

It runs on the same analyzed commit as the deterministic scan and is strictly advisory — it is not a security guarantee and never blocks a plugin by itself. A human moderator still reviews plugins before they are listed.

AI advisory only — automated analysis, not a security guarantee.

Install
$ omarchy plugin add https://github.com/joshferrara/quick-emoji --enable
Productivity #quickshell #system

Quick Emoji

Slack-style emoji completion in every app, built for Omarchy Quattro.

Verify

Quick Emoji searching for smile aliases

Type :w and a small, theme-aware picker appears at the caret. Keep typing to fuzzy-search, use the arrow keys to move, and press Enter, Tab, or Space to insert the highlighted emoji. A complete shortcut such as :wave: expands immediately to 👋. Escape closes the picker and leaves the literal text in place. The compact six-row picker scrolls through every ranked match one result at a time.

Install

omarchy plugin add https://github.com/joshferrara/quick-emoji.git --enable

Quick Emoji uses the Fcitx5 input-method service that Omarchy already runs. On first enable it compiles a small user-local Fcitx5 addon, installs it under ~/.local, adds a plugin-scoped environment drop-in to Omarchy's Fcitx5 user service, and restarts that service. No sudo, additional package, keylogger, accessibility permission, or second Quickshell process is used.

Quick Emoji checks its prerequisites before changing any files. A full Omarchy installation includes them. Reduced environments such as Try Omarchy may omit some packages; if so, setup reports one command containing everything missing:

omarchy pkg add fcitx5 pkgconf base-devel

Use

Key Action
:name: Expand an exact GitHub/Slack-style alias
:query Open and filter the picker
↑ / ↓ Move through all results one at a time
Page Up / Page Down Jump six results
Enter, Tab, or Space Insert the highlighted emoji
Escape Close and keep the literal :query text
Backspace Edit the query; at an empty query it cancels

The picker is intentionally disabled in password fields. Mouse selection also works, but the complete flow is keyboard navigable.

Terminal emulators

The picker is typically unwanted in terminal emulators, where :w, :q, and similar strings are shell commands or editor actions. By default Quick Emoji is disabled in these terminals (Alacritty, kitty, foot, Ghostty, WezTerm, GNOME Terminal, Konsole, xterm) — this also covers anything running inside them, such as zsh, tmux, helix, or vim.

To temporarily allow emoji completion in terminals, toggle it on:

bash ~/.config/omarchy/plugins/io.github.joshferrara.quick-emoji/scripts/manage.sh toggle-terminals

Running the same command again turns it back off. The toggle is instant (the addon checks a flag file on every keystroke) and persists across Fcitx5 restarts. When enabled, terminal emulators behave like any other app; password fields remain blocked regardless.

Search covers 1,870 Unicode emoji and 1,913 aliases from GitHub's gemoji, plus descriptions and keyword tags. Ranking favors exact aliases, then prefixes, contained terms, subsequences, and small spelling mistakes.

Omarchy integration

The popup uses Fcitx5's caret-aware candidate surface, configured as a compact vertical list. Its background, border, selection, text, and font are kept in sync with Quattro's live menu tokens. Corner radius, border color and width, spacing scale, and typography also follow the active theme, including changes while the session is running. Theme changes restart Omarchy's supervised Fcitx5 service once so its Classic UI reloads the generated SVG assets.

While enabled, Quick Emoji temporarily owns Fcitx5's classicui.conf so it can provide the vertical Omarchy-styled surface. It backs up the prior file and restores it when the plugin is disabled or removed. A lightweight systemd path unit handles cleanup if the repository folder is deleted outside Omarchy's normal removal flow. Enabling the plugin is explicit consent for this temporary configuration change; no existing configuration is discarded.

Remove

omarchy plugin remove io.github.joshferrara.quick-emoji

Removal restores the previous Fcitx5 UI configuration and deletes the compiled addon, service drop-in, generated theme, emoji data, cache, and cleanup unit. To perform that cleanup manually before removing the repository, run:

bash ~/.config/omarchy/plugins/io.github.joshferrara.quick-emoji/scripts/manage.sh deactivate

Requirements and security boundary

  • Omarchy Quattro
  • Fcitx5 and its development files, pkg-config, a C++ compiler, flock, and systemd user services (all present in a standard Omarchy installation)
  • Applications must expose a normal Fcitx/Wayland, GTK, Qt, or XIM text input context. Apps that deliberately bypass the system input method cannot be completed.

Like every Quattro plugin, this code runs unsandboxed with your user permissions. Quick Emoji sees keystrokes only after a text field has handed them to Fcitx5; it does not read /dev/input, store typed queries, use the network, or run as root.

Troubleshooting

If the picker does not appear, restart the shell and inspect its log:

omarchy-shell shell rescanPlugins
qs log -p "$OMARCHY_PATH/shell" --tail 100

Confirm Fcitx5 and the addon are running:

systemctl --user status omarchy-fcitx5.service
fcitx5-diagnose | rg -i 'quick emoji|quickemoji'

Successful setup also verifies that quickemoji.so is loaded by the supervised Fcitx5 process. If that check fails, inspect its service log:

journalctl --user -u omarchy-fcitx5.service -n 100

Some Electron applications need to be restarted after an input-method service restart. On older Chromium configurations, native Wayland text-input support may also need to be enabled.

Development

Validate the repository with Quattro's own validator:

omarchy plugin validate .

The native addon is compiled on the target system against its installed Fcitx5 ABI. To build it directly on Omarchy:

read -r -a cflags <<<"$(pkg-config --cflags Fcitx5Core)"
read -r -a libs <<<"$(pkg-config --libs Fcitx5Core)"
c++ -std=c++20 -O2 -fPIC -shared "${cflags[@]}" src/quickemoji.cpp \
  -o /tmp/quickemoji.so "${libs[@]}"

Credits

Quick Emoji is an independent project and is not affiliated with Rocket, GitHub, Fcitx, or Omarchy.