Hotkeys and hints for Omarchy's emoji picker

A few days ago I wrote about the Recents tab I built for Emojis & Nerd Fonts for Omarchy, the plugin by farangkao (MarkusD) that replaces Omarchy's emoji picker. The merge came with two more suggestions from MarkusD: hotkeys for the recents, and a grey hint beside each glyph so you know what it is. I built both and sent them as pull request #5. It was merged on 12 October and it's out in version 1.2.1.

What you get

• Alt+1 to Alt+9 and Alt+0 type one of the first ten recents. Alt+Shift with the number copies it instead.
• They work while searching too. Type “evil” and Alt+1 takes the first match. MarkusD's idea was to drop search from Recents to free the keys; on Alt, search could stay.
• The number is matched by the key, not the character, so Shift and other keyboard layouts don't change which recent you get.
• A hint beside each glyph, dimmed: the Nerd Font name, the kaomoji tags or the emoji's keywords. It comes from the Recents history itself, so nothing extra loads.
• Numbered badges in the active tab's colours, and a short footer with the key combinations.
• Two columns, filled row by row, that scroll up and down like every other tab. Searching gives one column.

Three rounds before the merge

The pull request changed a fair bit while MarkusD tested it, and every round made it better:

1. Alt+number copied instead of typing. Holding Alt turned the paste into Alt+Shift+Insert, so a terminal got an escape code and nothing was typed. I could reproduce it, and the fix waits for Alt to be released before typing.
2. Hidden columns. With a long history, extra columns sat off screen and could still be clicked. First I capped Recents at two columns with the badges and the footer, which MarkusD had designed, so that commit carries MarkusD's name too. Then I tried sideways scrolling, one column per wheel notch, to keep older entries reachable.
3. Consistency. MarkusD asked whether I had compared it with the other tabs. Fair point: they all scroll up and down. So Recents does the same now, and my own wheel code went away.

Recents as it opens, and after pressing Down twelve times: two columns, scrolling like the other tabs.

Then MarkusD merged everything as it was and added another pull request on top: a fix for the mouse stealing the first row's selection, the 0-9 in the footer drawn as keys, a pinned Nerd Fonts 3.5.1 and new screenshots for the marketplace. The README now mentions Recents, the hotkeys and the footer as mine, which was a nice surprise.

How it was tested

On Omarchy 4.0.4, with the plugin's tests passing at every step. By hand: Alt+Shift+2 and Alt+Shift+1 on a search (copy), Alt+3 typing into a terminal, typing with Alt still held after the fix, a 43-entry history (two columns of ten, nothing peeking out on the right), and 48 entries with Down pressed twelve times and the wheel. I didn't try Alt+0 or a non-US layout myself. One thing to know: if Alt+Shift switches your keyboard layout, the copy shortcut can trigger that too.

Thanks to MarkusD for the ideas, the testing and the patience. If you use Omarchy, it's on the plugin marketplace.