utility Search (the entire) Unicode (and Emoji)

[Eana Hufwe]

Search Unicode

Search Unicode is an Alfred 4 Workflow to lookup and reverse lookup Unicode characters and emoji with their names.

This workflow is also published on GitHub at https://github.com/blueset/alfred-search-unicode.

Download

Download it at its GitHub release page.

You need to install Python 3 on your macOS in order for this to work. You can install that with Homebrew using the command below:

brew install python

Usage

Search character by description

Type u keyword (ex. u superscript) to get a list of characters matching the keyword.

• Press Return to copy the character to clipboard (ex. ⁰)
• Press Cmd + Return to copy its Hex code to clipboard (ex. U+2070)
• Press Option + Return to copy its name to clipboard (ex. Superscript Zero)

Search character by code point

Type u codepoint [[codepoint] ...] (ex. u fffd ff10) to look up characters by its codepoint.

The same 3 options apply here too.

Search emoji by name

Type e keywords (ex. e face) to look up characters by its codepoint. Press Return to copy the character to clipboard (ex. 😀)

Identify characters in a string

Type uid string (ex. uid ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)) to identify characters in a string.

For the first 4 rows (hex sequence, integer sequence, UTF-8 sequence and XML escape sequence):

• Press Return to copy the sequence to clipboard (ex. 28 20 0361 B0 20 035C 0296 20 0361 B0 29)

For the following rows that identifies each individual characters:

• Press Cmd + Return to copy its Hex code to clipboard (ex. U+2070)
• Press Option + Return to copy its name to clipboard (ex. Superscript Zero)

Credit

This workflow depends on resources from:

• arp242/uni 1.0.0 with Unicode 12.1 Data
• Twemoji 12.1.4 for emoji preview

License

Copyright 2019 Eana Hufwe <https://1a23.com>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

[Terminal]

Great workflow. Its replacing a previous one, One recommendation. I would either add another script filter to include all skin tones or modify your script to include `["./uni", "-q", "emoji", "-tone", "all", query]).decode()`

 

I did that because I like to see all tones.

 

 

I also added a Auto Paste + Transient in Clipboard and No Auto Paste + Transient in Clipboard

 

[deanishe]

Very nice.

 

Bear in mind that the Unicode Identify feature often won't work as expected because Alfred always normalises Script (Filter) input to NFD. So if you enter U+00E4 (Latin small letter a with diaeresis), your Script Filter is going to receive and show U+0061 U+0308 (Latin small letter a + Combining diaeresis) instead.

[b7s9]

if anyone else is still on OSX 10.14 (Mojave) like me, you'll need to

1. make sure you "brew install python", as stated by OP
2. change the path at the top of all python scripts in this workflow: ("emoji_search.py", "unicode_identify.py", "unicode_search.py") to

#!/usr/local/bin/python3

 

so it will use the homebrew installed python. If anyone knows a way to get it to use pyenv please chime in

 

github discussion about this

[deanishe]

6 hours ago, b7s9 said:

If anyone knows a way to get it to use pyenv please chime in

 

In exactly the same way you get it to work with a Homebrew Python: change the shebang to point at the pyenv Python executable.