company-mode backend providing autocompletion for emoji. 🆒💦

Add company-emoji.el to your load-path, then add something like the following to your init file:

(require 'company-emoji)
(add-to-list 'company-backends 'company-emoji)

After selecting an emoji-word from the completion-list, it will be replaced by the real unicode emoji (:cactus: becomes 🌵, :cat: becomes 🐱, etc.)

If you’re on Linux, or on Mac OS X and using the Cocoa version of Emacs (i.e., if built ‐-with-ns, or --with-cocoa using Homebrew), you’ll need to add something like this to your init file (thanks to @syohex and @waymondo):

(defun --set-emoji-font (frame)
  "Adjust the font settings of FRAME so Emacs can display emoji properly."
  (if (eq system-type 'darwin)
      ;; For NS/Cocoa
      (set-fontset-font t 'symbol (font-spec :family "Apple Color Emoji") frame 'prepend)
    ;; For Linux
    (set-fontset-font t 'symbol (font-spec :family "Symbola") frame 'prepend)))

;; For when Emacs is started in GUI mode:
(--set-emoji-font nil)
;; Hook for when a frame is created with emacsclient
;; see https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Creating-Frames.html
(add-hook 'after-make-frame-functions '--set-emoji-font)

Symbola can be installed with apt-get:

apt-get install ttf-ancient-fonts

NB: The set-fontset-font function is apparently only available when Emacs has been compiled with a window system.

You can add shortcode aliases by modifying company-emoji-aliases. Run M-x customize-variable [RET] company-emoji-aliases to bring up company-emoji’s customization pane, then add or remove aliases to your taste:

Hide Company Emoji Aliases:
[INS] [DEL] Symbol: :woman_man_holding_hands:
            String: :couple:
[INS]

(“Symbol” designates the user-defined alias, and “string” designates the original shortcode you want your alias to mimick.)

Occasionally new default aliases may be added. If you’re upgrading and have modified the company-emoji-aliases variable, the new aliases will be ignored; you’ll need to add them manually.

By default, :cat: is replaced with 🐱 upon completion, but that can be turned off by setting the variable company-emoji-insert-unicode to nil.

Contributions are very welcome! But please don’t edit company-emoji-list.el directly: it’s generated by build/generate-list.rb, so you should modify that build script then run make company-emoji-list.el.