About
I built Mojito because Slack's :tada: → 🎉 should work everywhere on macOS, not just in Slack. It's free and open source.
FAQ
How is this different from macOS's built-in emoji picker?
The macOS picker (⌃⌘Space) is a separate window — open it, search, click, switch back. Mojito just appears next to your cursor as you type. Hit a colon, type a couple letters, arrow keys + Return to insert. No window, no mouse, no context switch.
Which apps does it work in?
Anywhere you can type — TextEdit, Terminal, Mail, Notes, browsers, Notion. It stays out of apps and sites that already do shortcode emoji natively (Slack, Discord, Messages, GitHub) so you don't get double-handling.
Can I customize it?
A few knobs in the menu bar: default skin tone, an optional symbol mode (:cmd: → ⌘, :star: → ★), and pause for an hour or until tomorrow. Results re-rank by how often you use them, and common emoticons like :) and <3 are recognized.
Can I insert GIFs too?
Yes — type ::: (three colons) then a search term to grab a GIF from Giphy. It's on by default; flip it off in Settings → General if you'd rather keep things local.
What languages is it available in?
The interface is translated into 19 locales — English (US + UK), German, Spanish (Spain + Latin America), French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew. Emoji shortcodes are localized in 14 of those, so :gato: works in Spanish, :chien: in French, and so on. Translations started as LLM drafts; native-speaker corrections are very welcome.
What are the system requirements?
macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Native on Apple Silicon and Intel.
How do updates and uninstall work?
Updates arrive automatically through Sparkle, the standard macOS update framework. To uninstall, quit Mojito from the menu bar and drag it from Applications to the Trash.
Is it open source?
Full source on GitHub, AGPL-3.0.
Is it really free? How can I support it?
Yes — no trial, no ads, no upsells. If you'd like to chip in, Buy Me a Coffee is much appreciated.
Is the app full of easter eggs for me to find?
Yes — unlike most software built today, Mojito is both useful and soulful. Have fun with it.
Privacy
Keystrokes are matched against the shortcode list locally — nothing you type is ever logged, transmitted, or stored on a server. Password and other secure-text fields are ignored entirely, and there's no account.
Mojito also shares anonymous, aggregate usage statistics — which emoji and features are popular, and what macOS versions people run. It's sent once a day with no identifier and your IP isn't stored, and you can switch it off in Settings → Privacy. The whole dataset is public on the stats page.
Beyond that, Mojito makes two other kinds of outbound request: an anonymous check for app updates, and — if GIF search is enabled (on by default — toggle in Settings → General) — the text you type after ::: is sent to Giphy to fetch matching GIFs, under Giphy's privacy policy.