Fuzzier search to make it easier to search the emoji you're looking for

[mvaneijgen]

I moved from the macOS build in emoji search with cmd + control + space to Glyphfinder, because I thought it would be easier to find the emoji I need at a certain moment. The build in macOS emoji finder is really strict and you have to know the name of the emoji to find the one you want (and usually I don't). Seeing that the name of you app is Glyphfinder I would figure that you fixed this issue, but sadly it is the same.

I use the wonen/man with laptop a lot, so I search "laptop" to find the emoji, I would figure to see the following emojis 💻️ 👨‍💻 👩‍💻 (and all there variances) but the only one it finds than is 💻️.

It would be great to have a more fuzzy search which finds more emojis that fall in a general categorie instead of having to remember the name of the emoji

[hanspagel]

Thanks for reaching out! I replaced the native one with Glyphfinder too. 🙃

I think your issue comes down to the fact that the tag is missing. Fuzzy search finds typos, but the tag “laptop” or ”computer” was just missing for the technoligist emojis👩‍💻. I added them, they will be part of the upcoming release.

I’ll leave this open. Feel free to add more terms where you couldn’t find the things you were looking for, I’m happy to add more!

[mvaneijgen]

Ah cool. I was hoping there would be a library of tags that already correspond to all the different emojis, but all the emoji search tools I've found do only the name of the emoji.

Here are also a few searches I've done in the past with the emojis I was hoping to find.

"paint" = 👨‍🎨 (all skintones)
"picture", "image", "frame" = 🌁🌃🏙️🌄🌅🌆🌇🌉🌠🌌🎆🎇🎑🖼️
"design" = ✏️ 🖌️ 🎨 👨‍🎨 (all skintones)

[hanspagel]

Oh, those are great! Added all, will be part of the next release. We already added a ton of tags (based on the name, on existing libraries and manually), but we need mooore. 😬

[bstrand]

A few ideas for improvements in this area:

1. Rank exact keyword matches higher in the results than substring matches. This seems like a generally sound principle, but one concrete example: 'DE' is a tag/keyword for 'flag: Germany', but when searching for 'de' the 🇩🇪 glyph appears 50+ rows down in the results. (This case can of course be worked around by adding 'flag' to the search, but again the general principle is that an exact tag match should score higher.)
   Edit: extracted into a new issue: Rank exact keyword matches higher than substring matches #81

2. Display the extended keywords (tags) associated with a glyph in the glyph data pane (perhaps optionally). This would help users discover existing options that might be easier to remember or type.
   Edit: extracted into a new issue: Show tags in glyph details  #83

3. User-defined keywords: i.e., allow users to add their own keywords to the index
   Edit: extracted into a new issue: Support user-defined keywords #82

4. Crib some more common keywords for emojis from WhatsApp

5. In-app keyword suggestion: enable users to submit suggestions for keywords easily within Glyphfinder. (Though I appreciate that, as far as I've seen, Glyphfinder never phones home or otherwise makes network requests. So perhaps just a link to simple web form to submit suggestions?)