pingmote

A cross-platform Python global emote picker to quickly insert custom images/gifs

Motivation: Poor Man's Discord Nitro

Demo

Since Discord autoembeds images, we can paste in links to custom emotes
The emote picker is written in Python with PySimpleGUI, with global hotkeys for activation (using keyboard)

Clone this repo: git clone https://github.com/dchen327/pingmote.git or download as a zip and extract
Change into the pingmote directory (make sure you can see pingmote.py)
Run pip install -r requirements.txt to install dependencies (pip3 if needed)

Running python3 pingmote.py (Mac and Linux: sudo python3 pingmote.py) starts the script, and when you hit the hotkey at the top of config.py (default ctrl+q), the emote picker will show up, allowing you to click an emote to insert
Hit the hotkey again to toggle the GUI, and drag the GUI somewhere convenient

Sorry for this being a bit complicated, I'm working on simplifying the workflow
Drop files in assets/original, then run image_resizer.py which will resize all the images (ignoring gifs) and drop them in assets/resized
Gif resizing (disabled by default) requires gifsicle, but a website like ezgif also works
Resize gifs to 64x64 and drop them in assets/original (they'll be ignored when the resizer is run)
Upload files from assets/resized to an image hoster (I like postimages). Copy the direct image links (ending in file extension) and paste in links.txt
A simpler alternative using GitHub: fork this repo and push your images, then drop your forked repo's URL in config.py (GITHUB_URL). This method doesn't require alternate hosting or links.txt
Note: Imgur doesn't work currently, since Imgur links don't contain the original filename
Some emote sources (right click > save image): discordmojis.com, emoji.gg, discord.st

Since this program relies on autoembedding, we can't use inline emotes or reacts
Pretty much only Discord works (Facebook Messenger and Slack make embeds ugly)
On Windows, renaming the file extension to pingmote.pyw allows for running the script in the background, and then it can be dropped into shell:startup
Windows should work out of the box, Mac and Linux may require jumping through some hoops
The Apple M1 chip is currently unsupported (bus error)
On Linux, if you get the error KeyError: 'XDG_SESSION_TYPE', set the environment variable by running

sudo XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11 python3 pingmote.py

Better ordering of emotes (categorization, etc.)
Simplify install process
Simplify the process for adding new emotes
Emote deletion in GUI
Ensure gif thumbnail isn't blank (not fully sure how to do this)
Search emotes by keyword (would require files to be named, since most of my files now are just a bunch of numbers)

Thanks to Luke Tong for cross-platform GUI and clipboard testing
Thanks to Stephane Morel for Windows testing
Thanks to Brazil-0034 for adding support for non-destructive pasting
Thanks to PySimpleGUI for major feature additions (incl. GitHub repo storage and a system tray) and debugging

Initial method (50 lines): xclip for copying local images, xdotool for pasting and keyboard commands
Switched to PyAutoGUI for keyboard simulation, xdotool no longer needed
Wrote image_resizer.py for locally resizing images
Uploaded images to postimages; simplified copy pasting of links only and not image data (removed all subprocess calls)
Added frequents section for favorite emotes
Added feature to open the GUI near the mouse cursor
Cleaned up links for better file to link mapping
Switched to pynput for cross-platform global hotkey mapping, fully removed PyAutoGUI dependencies
Added section labels and ability to separate images and gifs
Switched to keyboard from pynput to fix hotkey blocking behavior (after 3 weeks of zero progress)
Cleaned up image_resizer.py
Shifted configs to separate file
Added tray icon (from PySimpleGUI's psgtray)