Smiley Caret: Text to Emoji

About

Smiley Caret makes typing emoji effortless and natural — no copy/paste, no emoji picker needed.

• Type classic emoticons like :) :D ;P <3 and they automatically become the matching emoji when you press space or enter.
• Type a colon + letters (e.g. :grin, :heart, :fire) to open an in-field searchable dropdown of emoji.
• Works in virtually every input, textarea, and rich text field on the web — including right at the beginning of a line or empty field.
• Click the toolbar icon to instantly toggle the extension on or off.
• Special copy-to-clipboard mode on Facebook/Messenger so it doesn't fight their built-in emoji system.

Fully rebuilt for Manifest V3 (required for continued availability on the Chrome Web Store). Every remote dependency and piece of remote code (Twemoji, external fonts, CDNs) has been completely removed. The extension is now 100% offline, uses only locally bundled data, and follows current security best practices.

No analytics, no tracking, no network requests — ever. Your typing never leaves your device.

Recent improvements:
- Reliable replacement even when the shortcode is the very first thing you type on a line or in a field
- Better keyboard support, including proper handling for IME/composition input
- Modern service-worker icon handling and focus/keyboard event improvements
- Cleaner architecture with deterministic builds and fewer edge-case bugs

Minimal permissions — only "storage" (to remember your on/off toggle). We run on all sites because you type in text fields everywhere; we only read and modify the text you're actively composing in the current field.

Open source: https://github.com/macedot/smiley-caret

Type happy. Stay private. 🙂