uni queries the Unicode database from the commandline. It supports Unicode
15.1 (September 2023) and has good support for emojis.
There are four commands: identify codepoints in a string, search for
codepoints, print codepoints by class, block, or range, and emoji to find
emojis.
There are binaries on the releases page, and packages for a number of platforms. You can also run it in your browser.
Compile from source with:
% go install module zgo.at/uni/v2@latest
which will give you a uni binary in ~/go/bin.
README index:
-
dmenu, rofi, and fzf script at
dmenu-uni. See the top of the script for some options you may want to frob with. -
For a Vim command see
uni.vim; just copy/paste it in your vimrc.
Note: the alignment is slightly off for some entries due to the way GitHub renders wide characters; in terminals it should be aligned correctly.
Identify characters in a string, as a kind of a unicode-aware hexdump:
% uni identify €
Dec UTF8 HTML Name
'€' U+20AC 8364 e2 82 ac € EURO SIGN
i is a shortcut for identify:
% uni i h€ý
Dec UTF8 HTML Name
'h' U+0068 104 68 h LATIN SMALL LETTER H
'€' U+20AC 8364 e2 82 ac € EURO SIGN
'ý' U+00FD 253 c3 bd ý LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH ACUTE
It reads from stdin:
% head -c5 README.md | uni i
CPoint Dec UTF8 HTML Name
'`' U+0060 96 60 ` GRAVE ACCENT [backtick, backquote]
'u' U+0075 117 75 u LATIN SMALL LETTER U
'n' U+006E 110 6e n LATIN SMALL LETTER N
'i' U+0069 105 69 i LATIN SMALL LETTER I
'`' U+0060 96 60 ` GRAVE ACCENT [backtick, backquote]
% echo 'U+1234 U+1111' | uni p
CPoint Dec UTF8 HTML Name
'ᄑ' U+1111 4369 e1 84 91 ᄑ HANGUL CHOSEONG PHIEUPH [P]
'ሴ' U+1234 4660 e1 88 b4 ሴ ETHIOPIC SYLLABLE SEE
You can use -compact (or -c) to suppress the header, and -format (or -f)
to control the output format:
% uni i -f '%unicode %name' a€🧟
Unicode Name
1.1 LATIN SMALL LETTER A
2.1 EURO SIGN
10.0 ZOMBIE
If the format string starts with + it will automatically be prepended with the
character, codepoint, and name:
% uni i -f +%unicode a€🧟
Name Unicode
'a' U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A 1.1
'€' U+20AC EURO SIGN 2.1
'🧟' U+1F9DF ZOMBIE 10.0
You can add more advanced options with %(name flags); for example to generate
an aligned codepoint to X11 keysym mapping:
% uni i -c -f '0x%(hex l:auto f:0): %(keysym l:auto q:":",) // %name' h€ý
0x6800: "h", // LATIN SMALL LETTER H
0x20ac: "EuroSign", // EURO SIGN
0xfd00: "yacute", // LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH ACUTE
See uni help for more details on the -format flag; this flag can also be
added to other commands.
Search description:
% uni search euro
Dec UTF8 HTML Name
'₠' U+20A0 8352 e2 82 a0 ₠ EURO-CURRENCY SIGN
'€' U+20AC 8364 e2 82 ac € EURO SIGN
'𐡷' U+10877 67703 f0 90 a1 b7 𐡷 PALMYRENE LEFT-POINTING FLEURON
'𐡸' U+10878 67704 f0 90 a1 b8 𐡸 PALMYRENE RIGHT-POINTING FLEURON
'𐫱' U+10AF1 68337 f0 90 ab b1 𐫱 MANICHAEAN PUNCTUATION FLEURON
'🌍' U+1F30D 127757 f0 9f 8c 8d 🌍 EARTH GLOBE EUROPE-AFRICA
'🏤' U+1F3E4 127972 f0 9f 8f a4 🏤 EUROPEAN POST OFFICE
'🏰' U+1F3F0 127984 f0 9f 8f b0 🏰 EUROPEAN CASTLE
'💶' U+1F4B6 128182 f0 9f 92 b6 💶 BANKNOTE WITH EURO SIGN
The s command is a shortcut for search. Multiple words are matched
individually:
% uni s globe earth
Dec UTF8 HTML Name
'🌍' U+1F30D 127757 f0 9f 8c 8d 🌍 EARTH GLOBE EUROPE-AFRICA
'🌎' U+1F30E 127758 f0 9f 8c 8e 🌎 EARTH GLOBE AMERICAS
'🌏' U+1F30F 127759 f0 9f 8c 8f 🌏 EARTH GLOBE ASIA-AUSTRALIA
Use shell quoting for more literal matches:
% uni s rightwards black arrow
Dec UTF8 HTML Name
'➡' U+27A1 10145 e2 9e a1 ➡ BLACK RIGHTWARDS ARROW
'➤' U+27A4 10148 e2 9e a4 ➤ BLACK RIGHTWARDS ARROWHEAD
…
% uni s 'rightwards black arrow'
Dec UTF8 HTML Name
'⮕' U+2B95 11157 e2 ae 95 ⮕ RIGHTWARDS BLACK ARROW
Add -or or -o to combine the search terms with "OR" instead of "AND":
% uni s -o globe milky
Dec UTF8 HTML Name
'🌌' U+1F30C 127756 f0 9f 8c 8c 🌌 MILKY WAY
'🌍' U+1F30D 127757 f0 9f 8c 8d 🌍 EARTH GLOBE EUROPE-AFRICA
'🌎' U+1F30E 127758 f0 9f 8c 8e 🌎 EARTH GLOBE AMERICAS
'🌏' U+1F30F 127759 f0 9f 8c 8f 🌏 EARTH GLOBE ASIA-AUSTRALIA
'🌐' U+1F310 127760 f0 9f 8c 90 🌐 GLOBE WITH MERIDIANS
Print specific codepoints or groups of codepoints:
% uni print U+2042
Dec UTF8 HTML Name
'⁂' U+2042 8258 e2 81 82 ⁂ ASTERISM
Print a custom range; U+2042, U2042, and 2042 are all identical:
% uni print 2042..2044
Dec UTF8 HTML Name
'⁂' U+2042 8258 e2 81 82 ⁂ ASTERISM
'⁃' U+2043 8259 e2 81 83 ⁃ HYPHEN BULLET
'⁄' U+2044 8260 e2 81 84 ⁄ FRACTION SLASH [solidus]
You can also use hex, octal, and binary numbers: 0x2024, 0o20102, or
0b10000001000010.
General category:
% uni p Po
Showing category Po (Other_Punctuation)
Dec UTF8 HTML Name
'!' U+0021 33 21 ! EXCLAMATION MARK [factorial, bang]
…
Blocks:
% uni p arrows 'box drawing'
Showing block Arrows
Showing block Box Drawing
Dec UTF8 HTML Name
'←' U+2190 8592 e2 86 90 ← LEFTWARDS ARROW
'↑' U+2191 8593 e2 86 91 ↑ UPWARDS ARROW
…
Print as table, and with a shorter name:
% uni p -as table box
Showing block Box Drawing
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
U+250x │ ─ ━ │ ┃ ┄ ┅ ┆ ┇ ┈ ┉ ┊ ┋ ┌ ┍ ┎ ┏
│
U+251x │ ┐ ┑ ┒ ┓ └ ┕ ┖ ┗ ┘ ┙ ┚ ┛ ├ ┝ ┞ ┟
│
U+252x │ ┠ ┡ ┢ ┣ ┤ ┥ ┦ ┧ ┨ ┩ ┪ ┫ ┬ ┭ ┮ ┯
│
U+253x │ ┰ ┱ ┲ ┳ ┴ ┵ ┶ ┷ ┸ ┹ ┺ ┻ ┼ ┽ ┾ ┿
│
U+254x │ ╀ ╁ ╂ ╃ ╄ ╅ ╆ ╇ ╈ ╉ ╊ ╋ ╌ ╍ ╎ ╏
│
U+255x │ ═ ║ ╒ ╓ ╔ ╕ ╖ ╗ ╘ ╙ ╚ ╛ ╜ ╝ ╞ ╟
│
U+256x │ ╠ ╡ ╢ ╣ ╤ ╥ ╦ ╧ ╨ ╩ ╪ ╫ ╬ ╭ ╮ ╯
│
U+257x │ ╰ ╱ ╲ ╳ ╴ ╵ ╶ ╷ ╸ ╹ ╺ ╻ ╼ ╽ ╾ ╿
│
Or more compact table:
% uni p -as table box -compact
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
U+250x │ ─ ━ │ ┃ ┄ ┅ ┆ ┇ ┈ ┉ ┊ ┋ ┌ ┍ ┎ ┏
U+251x │ ┐ ┑ ┒ ┓ └ ┕ ┖ ┗ ┘ ┙ ┚ ┛ ├ ┝ ┞ ┟
U+252x │ ┠ ┡ ┢ ┣ ┤ ┥ ┦ ┧ ┨ ┩ ┪ ┫ ┬ ┭ ┮ ┯
U+253x │ ┰ ┱ ┲ ┳ ┴ ┵ ┶ ┷ ┸ ┹ ┺ ┻ ┼ ┽ ┾ ┿
U+254x │ ╀ ╁ ╂ ╃ ╄ ╅ ╆ ╇ ╈ ╉ ╊ ╋ ╌ ╍ ╎ ╏
U+255x │ ═ ║ ╒ ╓ ╔ ╕ ╖ ╗ ╘ ╙ ╚ ╛ ╜ ╝ ╞ ╟
U+256x │ ╠ ╡ ╢ ╣ ╤ ╥ ╦ ╧ ╨ ╩ ╪ ╫ ╬ ╭ ╮ ╯
U+257x │ ╰ ╱ ╲ ╳ ╴ ╵ ╶ ╷ ╸ ╹ ╺ ╻ ╼ ╽ ╾ ╿
The emoji command (shortcut: e) is is the real reason I wrote this:
% uni e cry
Name CLDR
🥹 face holding back tears [admiration, angry, aw, aww, cry, embarrassed, feelings, grateful, gratitude, please, proud, resist, sad, sadness, tears of joy]
😢 crying face [awful, feels, miss, sad, tear, triste, unhappy]
😭 loudly crying face [bawling, sad, sob, tear, tears, unhappy]
😿 crying cat [animal, crying cat face, face, sad, tear]
🔮 crystal ball [fairy tale, fairytale, fantasy, fortune, future, magic, tool]
By default both the name and CLDR data are searched; the CLDR data is a list of
keywords for an emoji; prefix with name: or n: to search on the name only:
% uni e smile
Name CLDR
😀 grinning face [cheerful, cheery, happy, laugh, nice, smile, smiling, teeth]
😃 grinning face with big eyes [awesome, happy, mouth, open, smile, smiling, smiling face with open mouth, teeth, yay]
…
% uni e name:smile
Name CLDR
😼 cat with wry smile [animal, cat face with wry smile, face, ironic]
As you can see, the CLDR is pretty useful, as "smile" only gives one result as most emojis use "smiling".
Prefix with group: to search by group:
% uni e group:hands
Name CLDR
👏 clapping hands [applause, approval, awesome, congrats, congratulations, excited, good job, great, homie, nice, prayed, well done, yay]
🙌 raising hands [celebration, gesture, hooray, praise, raised]
🫶 heart hands [<3, love, love you]
👐 open hands [hug, jazz hands, swerve]
🤲 palms up together [cupped hands, dua, pray, prayer, wish]
🤝 handshake [agreement, deal, meeting]
🙏 folded hands [appreciate, ask, beg, blessed, bow, cmon, five, gesture, high 5, high five, please, pray, thank, thank you, thanks, thx]
Group and search can be combined, and group: can be abbreviated to g::
% uni e g:cat-face grin
Name CLDR
😺 grinning cat [animal, face, mouth, open, smile, smiling cat face with open mouth]
😸 grinning cat with smiling eyes [animal, face, grinning cat face with smiling eyes, smile]
Like with search, use -or to OR the parameters together instead of AND:
% uni e -or g:face-glasses g:face-hat
Name CLDR
🤠 cowboy hat face [cowgirl]
🥳 partying face [birthday, celebrate, celebration, excited, happy bday, happy birthday, hat, hooray, horn]
🥸 disguised face [eyebrow, glasses, incognito, moustache, mustache, nose, person, spy, tache, tash]
😎 smiling face with sunglasses [awesome, beach, bright, bro, chillin, cool, eye, eyewear, fly, rad, relaxed, shades, slay, smile, stunner, style, swag, swagger, win, winning, yeah]
🤓 nerd face [brainy, clever, expert, geek, gifted, glasses, intelligent, smart]
🧐 face with monocle [classy, fancy, rich, stuffy, wealthy]
Apply skin tone modifiers with -tone:
% uni e -tone dark g:hands
Name CLDR
👏🏿 clapping hands: dark skin tone [applause, approval, awesome, congrats, congratulations, excited, good job, great, homie, nice, prayed, well done, yay]
🙌🏿 raising hands: dark skin tone [celebration, gesture, hooray, praise, raised]
🫶🏿 heart hands: dark skin tone [<3, love, love you]
👐🏿 open hands: dark skin tone [hug, jazz hands, swerve]
🤲🏿 palms up together: dark skin tone [cupped hands, dua, pray, prayer, wish]
🤝🏿 handshake: dark skin tone [agreement, deal, meeting]
🙏🏿 folded hands: dark skin tone [appreciate, ask, beg, blessed, bow, cmon, five, gesture, high 5, high five, please, pray, thank, thank you, thanks, thx]
The handshake emoji supports setting individual skin tones per hand since Unicode 14, but this isn't supported, mostly because I can't really really think a good CLI interface for setting this without breaking compatibility (there are some other emojis too, like "holding hands" and "kissing" where you can set both the gender and skin tone of both sides individually). Maybe for uni v3 someday.
The default is to display only the gender-neutral "person", but this can be
changed with the -gender option:
% uni e -gender man g:person-gesture
Name CLDR
🙍♂️ man frowning [annoyed, disappoint, disgruntled, disturbed, frustrated, gesture, irritated, not happy, person frowning, upset, woman frowning]
🙎♂️ man pouting [disappoint, downtrodden, frown, gesture, grimace, person pouting, scowl, sulk, upset, whine, woman pouting]
🙅♂️ man gesturing NO [exclude, forbidden, gesture, hand, no, nope, not, not a chance, person gesturing NO, prohibit, prohibited, woman gesturing NO]
🙆♂️ man gesturing OK [exercise, gesture, hand, omg, person gesturing OK, woman gesturing OK]
💁♂️ man tipping hand [fetch, gossip, hair flick, hair flip, help, information, person tipping hand, sarcasm, sarcastic, sassy, seriously, whatever, woman tipping hand]
🙋♂️ man raising hand [gesture, hands, happy, I can help, i know, me, over here, person raising hand, pick me, question, raised, right here, woman raising hand]
🧏♂️ deaf man [accessibility, deaf person, ear, hear]
🙇♂️ man bowing [apology, beg, forgive, gesture, meditate, meditation, person bowing, pity, regret, sorry]
🤦♂️ man facepalming [disbelief, exasperation, not again, oh no, omg, person, person facepalming, shock, smh]
🤷♂️ man shrugging [doubt, dunno, i dunno, I guess, idk, ignorance, indifference, maybe, person, person shrugging, whatever, who knows]
Both -tone and -gender accept multiple values. -gender women,man will
display both the female and male variants, and -tone light,dark will display
both a light and dark skin tone; use all to display all skin tones or genders:
% uni e -tone light,dark -gender f,m shrug
Name CLDR
🤷🏻♂️ man shrugging: light skin tone [doubt, dunno, i dunno, I guess, idk, ignorance, indifference, maybe, person, person shrugging, whatever, who knows]
🤷🏻♀️ woman shrugging: light skin tone [doubt, dunno, i dunno, I guess, idk, ignorance, indifference, maybe, person, person shrugging, whatever, who knows]
🤷🏿♂️ man shrugging: dark skin tone [doubt, dunno, i dunno, I guess, idk, ignorance, indifference, maybe, person, person shrugging, whatever, who knows]
🤷🏿♀️ woman shrugging: dark skin tone [doubt, dunno, i dunno, I guess, idk, ignorance, indifference, maybe, person, person shrugging, whatever, who knows]
Like print and identify, you can use -format:
% uni e g:cat-face -c -format '%(name): %(emoji)'
grinning cat: 😺
grinning cat with smiling eyes: 😸
cat with tears of joy: 😹
smiling cat with heart-eyes: 😻
cat with wry smile: 😼
kissing cat: 😽
weary cat: 🙀
crying cat: 😿
pouting cat: 😾
See uni help for more details on the -format flag.
With -as json or -as j you can output the data as JSON:
% uni i -as json h€ý
[{
"aliases": "",
"char": "h",
"cpoint": "U+0068",
"dec": "104",
"html": "h",
"name": "LATIN SMALL LETTER H",
"utf8": "68"
}, {
"aliases": "",
"char": "€",
"cpoint": "U+20AC",
"dec": "8364",
"html": "€",
"name": "EURO SIGN",
"utf8": "e2 82 ac"
}, {
"aliases": "",
"char": "ý",
"cpoint": "U+00FD",
"dec": "253",
"html": "ý",
"name": "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH ACUTE",
"utf8": "c3 bd"
}]
All the columns listed in -f will be included; you can use -f all to include
all columns:
% uni i -as json -f all h€ý
[{
"aliases": "",
"bin": "1101000",
"block": "Basic Latin",
"cat": "Lowercase_Letter",
"cells": "1",
"char": "h",
"cpoint": "U+0068",
"dec": "104",
"digraph": "h",
"hex": "68",
"html": "h",
"json": "\\u0068",
"keysym": "h",
"name": "LATIN SMALL LETTER H",
"oct": "150",
"plane": "Basic Multilingual Plane",
"props": "",
"refs": "U+04BB, U+210E",
"script": "Latin",
"unicode": "1.1",
"utf16be": "00 68",
"utf16le": "68 00",
"utf8": "68",
"width": "neutral",
"xml": "h"
}, {
"aliases": "",
"bin": "10000010101100",
"block": "Currency Symbols",
"cat": "Currency_Symbol",
"cells": "1",
"char": "€",
"cpoint": "U+20AC",
"dec": "8364",
"digraph": "=e",
"hex": "20ac",
"html": "€",
"json": "\\u20ac",
"keysym": "EuroSign",
"name": "EURO SIGN",
"oct": "20254",
"plane": "Basic Multilingual Plane",
"props": "",
"refs": "U+20A0",
"script": "Common",
"unicode": "2.1",
"utf16be": "20 ac",
"utf16le": "ac 20",
"utf8": "e2 82 ac",
"width": "ambiguous",
"xml": "€"
}, {
"aliases": "",
"bin": "11111101",
"block": "Latin-1 Supplement",
"cat": "Lowercase_Letter",
"cells": "1",
"char": "ý",
"cpoint": "U+00FD",
"dec": "253",
"digraph": "y'",
"hex": "fd",
"html": "ý",
"json": "\\u00fd",
"keysym": "yacute",
"name": "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH ACUTE",
"oct": "375",
"plane": "Basic Multilingual Plane",
"props": "",
"refs": "",
"script": "Latin",
"unicode": "1.1",
"utf16be": "00 fd",
"utf16le": "fd 00",
"utf8": "c3 bd",
"width": "narrow",
"xml": "ý"
}]
This also works for the emoji command:
% uni e -as json -f all 'kissing cat'
[{
"cldr": "animal, eye, face, kissing cat face with closed eyes",
"cldr_full": "animal, cat, eye, face, kiss, kissing cat, kissing cat face with closed eyes",
"cpoint": "U+1F63D",
"emoji": "😽",
"group": "Smileys & Emotion",
"name": "kissing cat",
"subgroup": "cat-face"
}]
All values are always a string, even numerical values. This makes things a bit
easier/consistent as JSON doesn't support hex literals and such. Use jq or
some other tool if you want to process the data further.
Moved to CHANGELOG.md.
Re-generate the Unicode data with go generate unidata. Files are cached in
unidata/.cache, so clear that if you want to update the files from remote.
This requires zsh and GNU awk (gawk).
Note this is from ~2017/2018 when I first wrote this; I don't re-evaluate every program every year, and I don't go finding newly created tools every year either.
-
https://github.com/philpennock/character
More or less similar to uni, but very different CLI, and has some additional features. Seems pretty good.
-
https://github.com/sindresorhus/emoj
Doesn't support emojis sequences (e.g. MAN SHRUGGING is PERSON SHRUGGING + MAN, FIREFIGHTER is PERSON + FIRE TRUCK, etc); quite slow for a CLI program (
emoj smilingtakes 1.8s on my system, sometimes a lot longer), search results are pretty bad (shrugreturns unamused face, thinking face, eyes, confused face, neutral face, tears of joy, and expressionless face ... but not the shrugging emoji), not a fan of npm (has 1862 dependencies). -
https://github.com/Fingel/tuimoji
Grouping could be better, doesn't support emojis sequences, only interactive TUI, feels kinda slow-ish especially when searching.
-
https://github.com/pemistahl/chr
Only deals with codepoints, not emojis.
-
gnome-characters
Uses Gnome interface/window decorations and won't work well with other WMs, doesn't deal with emoji sequences, I don't like the grouping/ordering it uses, requires two clicks to copy a character.
-
gucharmap
Doesn't display emojis, just unicode blocks.
-
KCharSelect
Many KDE-specific dependencies (106M). Didn't try it.
-
https://github.com/Mange/rofi-emoji and https://github.com/fdw/rofimoji
Both are pretty similar to the dmenu/rofi integration of uni with some minor differences, and both seem to work well with no major issues.
-
gtk3 emoji picker (Ctrl+; or Ctrl+. in gtk 3.93 or newer)
Only works in GTK, doesn't work with
GTK_IM_MODULE=xim(needed for compose key), for some reasons the emojis look ugly, doesn't display emojis sequences, doesn't have a tooltip or other text description about what the emoji actually is, the variation selector doesn't seem to work (never displays skin tone?), doesn't work in Firefox.This is so broken on my system that it seems that I'm missing something for this to work or something?
-
https://github.com/rugk/awesome-emoji-picker
Only works in Firefox; takes a tad too long to open; doesn't support skin tones.
Some alternatives people have suggested that I haven't looked at; make an issue or email me if you know of any others.
- https://github.com/cassidyjames/ideogram
- https://github.com/OzymandiasTheGreat/emoji-keyboard
- https://github.com/salty-horse/ibus-uniemoji
- https://fcitx-im.org/wiki/Unicode
- http://kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk/~garabik/software/unicode/ and https://github.com/garabik/unicode (same?)
- https://billposer.org/Software/unidesc.html
- https://github.com/NoraCodes/charpicker (rofi)
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