Release notes
What changed in each version of Comoji, newest first. Comoji updates itself when Keep Comoji up to date is on; you can also choose Check for Updates… from its menu bar menu.
New
- Comoji speaks eight languages. The menu bar menu, Preferences, the setup guide, the emoji browser, and the sticker and GIF pickers now appear in Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, or Simplified Chinese, following your Mac’s language. Shortcodes like
:fire:stay the same in every language. Read the announcement.
Fixed
- The
::emoji browser and the/stickerand/gifpickers now open right below where you are typing, instead of in the middle of the screen. When there isn’t room below, they open above, or beside the text.
Fixed
- The
/stickerand/gifpickers and the::emoji browser now follow your Appearance setting. They used to stay dark even when you chose Light, or when System was set on a light Mac. The selection highlight uses your chosen accent color too.
New
- Comoji Supporter. An optional one-time $1.99 upgrade that hides the promotions for my other apps. Every feature stays free either way. Your license is verified on your Mac, so Comoji never has to check in with a server. See Pricing.
- The
:emoji:suggestion popup, the::emoji browser, and the sticker and GIF pickers now stay open while you take a screenshot with ⌘⇧3, ⌘⇧4, or ⌘⇧5.
Improved
- Removed the Privacy: Local Only item from the menu bar menu. The complete list of what Comoji connects to is still on the Security page.
- Added Weatherling to Other Projects.
New
- Secure Input detection. When another app turns on macOS Secure Input, which silently stops Comoji and every other keyboard utility, the menu bar icon shows a padlock and the menu names the app holding it. Learn how to fix a stuck Secure Input.
- Every item in the menu bar menu now has an icon.
- A small promotion for one of my other Mac apps can appear in the sticker and GIF grids and at the bottom of the emoji popup. Nothing is downloaded or tracked to show it, and the arrow keys skip right over it.
Fixed
- Deleting a word back to the colon and typing a new one (for example
:lizto:dog) now brings the suggestion popup back.
Fixed
- Updates no longer get stuck at Install and Relaunch. Comoji now checks for new versions hourly instead of daily, and Check for Updates… retries an update that has already downloaded.
- Clicking an emoji suggestion reliably replaces the shortcut you typed, including in browser editors such as X and LinkedIn. A click could close the popup first and leave the
:shortcutbehind. - Pressing Return while a slow GIF search is still loading no longer picks a hidden result from your previous search.
New
- Stickers and GIFs work wherever you type.
/stickerand/gifare no longer limited to Messages. Use them in WhatsApp, Mail, a browser, or any other supported text field. Both still respect your disabled apps and websites, and neither runs in a password field.
New
- Comoji installs its own updates. With Keep Comoji up to date on, Comoji downloads new versions in the background and installs them while you are away from the keyboard, then relaunches. It never restarts mid-sentence. Choose Update to vX from the menu to install right away.
Fixed
- GIFs in the
/gifpicker now animate, so you can see what you are picking.
New
- A native macOS look for the suggestion popup. It now uses the standard translucent material and system text colors, and follows Light and Dark mode. Preferences › Appearance lets you choose System, Light, or Dark and pick the highlight color, with a live preview.
- Check the “everything is local” claim yourself. The new Security page lists every host Comoji ever contacts, with the commands to verify it on your own Mac. The app enforces that list: a request to anywhere else, even through a redirect, is refused. The setup screen now explains what each permission is used for. There is also a step-by-step guide.
- Added Highwire and SeedMatrix to Other Projects.
Improved
/gifcan never stall your typing. Every GIPHY request runs in the background with a hard timeout, an offline Mac shows “Couldn’t reach GIPHY” instead of spinning, and a GIF that fails to download cleans up after itself.
Fixed
- Opening
/stickercould slow the whole Mac to a crawl and leave the keyboard unresponsive until Comoji was force-quit. Sticker loading now happens off the main thread, and a watchdog lets your keystrokes pass straight through if Comoji ever stops responding. - Opening
/stickera second time no longer shows an empty grid.
Fixed
- Comoji could keep offering an update you had already installed. Its quit-to-menu-bar behavior was blocking the updater from relaunching it, so the old version kept running. Updates now relaunch properly, and Comoji never offers a version you already have.
Improved
- Lower CPU use while you type. Ordinary keystrokes no longer query the focused app at all, and Comoji stops checking the current website while it is turned off.
Fixed
- Setup no longer reports Input Monitoring as off when it is actually working. Some macOS versions misreport the permission.
Fixed
- A mouse pointer resting over the suggestion popup no longer steals the selection while you use the arrow keys.
- The setup window now opens whenever a permission is missing, for example after macOS resets it, and stays open so you can try Comoji in its test field.
- The logo on the setup screen displays at its proper size.
Fixed
- The suggestion popup no longer jumps up and down as you arrow through results.
- After clearing a text field, typing a colon opens the popup again.
Fixed
- On X and some other web editors, the suggestion popup appeared in the corner of the screen. It now opens next to the text box.
- The update window no longer shows a Version History link that led nowhere.
New
- Automatic update checks. When a new version is out, a small arrow appears on the menu bar icon and an Update to vX item appears at the top of the menu, with no pop-ups interrupting you. Every update is signed and verified before it installs. Turn it on or off with Keep Comoji up to date in setup or in Preferences › Updates.
New
- `/gif` search. Type
/gifand a search term in Messages to find an animated GIF from GIPHY and send it without leaving the keyboard.
New
- Preferences has a new sidebar layout and an Other Projects section.
Improved
- Comoji behaves like a proper menu bar app: it shows a Dock icon only while one of its windows is open, and ⌘W closes the window back to the menu bar.
Fixed
- The Applications folder shortcut in the installer disk image works again.
Improved
- Comoji starts quietly in the menu bar at login. The setup window appears only on first run.
Fixed
- After backspacing into a word, typing a colon no longer opens suggestions in the middle of it.
Improved
- No more typing lag in browsers and Electron apps. Comoji now inspects the text field only after you type the colon, not on every keystroke.
Fixed
- A colon in the middle of a word, such as a Gmail
from:search, no longer opens the suggestion popup. Suggestions start only at the beginning of a word.
The first tagged release of Comoji.
New
- `:emoji:` autocomplete everywhere on your Mac. Type a colon and a few letters, then press Tab to insert the emoji.
- The `::` emoji browser. Type two colons to browse every emoji with the keyboard.
- `/sticker` in Messages. Send animated stickers from Google’s Noto Animated Emoji.
- Choose your own trigger key.
- Turn Comoji off in chosen apps or on chosen websites. The menu bar icon shows when it is off.
- Comoji stays out of the way in Slack and Discord, which have their own emoji autocomplete, and never runs in password fields.