Comparison · Slack shortcodes
Slack-style emoji shortcodes, outside Slack
If you use Slack or GitHub all day, typing :tada: is already muscle memory. Then you switch to any other tab and the muscle memory produces literal colons, which is a small, daily, entirely unnecessary annoyance.
The same thirty seconds, twice
You are writing a launch email in Gmail and your fingers type :tada: out of habit.
What happens today
- 01 Two literal colons sit in the sentence doing nothing
- 02 Delete them
- 03 Open the system picker, or a copy-paste tab
- 04 Search "party popper", because searching "party" does not match
- 05 Paste it, then find your place in the sentence again
- 06 Quietly resent that this works fine in Slack
Every time, on every site that is not Slack
With Emoji Anywhere
- 01 Type :tada
- 02 Press Enter
The same muscle memory, everywhere else
The real suggestion engine, running on this page. No install needed to try it.
What you would type instead
:tada → 🎉 the one from every launch thread
:eyes → 👀 "looking at it", the Slack way
:100 → 💯 the same code you already use
:shrug → ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ which Slack itself never did
Side by side
| Emoji Anywhere | Slack itself | |
|---|---|---|
| Works in Gmail, X, Facebook, LinkedIn | ✓ | — |
| Works inside Slack | off by default, on request | ✓ |
| Same :shortcode: names | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom workspace emoji | — | ✓ |
| Your frequent emojis via :: | ✓ | — |
| Kaomoji like :shrug: | ✓ | — |
| Account required | — | ✓ |
Where the other option wins
Slack and GitHub do this better inside their own products, because they control the editor and can offer custom workspace emoji we will never see. Your :shipit: squirrel is an image someone uploaded to your workspace rather than a Unicode character, so no extension can carry it out into the wider web. We deliberately stay switched off on those sites so you never get two menus fighting.
Where this one wins
- ✓ The same :shortcode: names you already know
- ✓ Works in X, Gmail, Notion, LinkedIn and anywhere else you type
- ✓ :: for the emojis you personally use most
- ✓ Off by default where a native picker already exists
- ✓ Free and private
The verdict
This is the one to install if the phrase "I keep typing :tada: and nothing happens" is familiar.
Questions
Are the shortcode names exactly the same as Slack?
For standard Unicode emoji, yes. Both follow the same naming convention that GitHub and Discord also use, so :tada:, :fire: and :joy: behave identically. Custom workspace emoji are images uploaded to your own Slack, so they only exist there.
Will it fight with Slack’s own autocomplete?
No, because it stays switched off on slack.com by default, along with Discord, GitHub, GitLab, Notion, WhatsApp Web, Teams and Zulip. Two autocomplete menus racing for the same colon is worse than either alone. There is a per-site toggle if you want ours anyway.
Does it work in Slack in the browser if I turn it on?
Yes. The toggle lives in the popup and applies per site. Most people leave it off there and on everywhere else.
Your keyboard already knows what you mean
Free, 280 KB, no account. Two letters from now you will never open an emoji panel again.