chore: remove emojione in favor of native emojis

[sampaiodiego]

Replace Emojione with Native Unicode Emojis

Summary

This PR removes the dependency on Emojione and transitions Rocket.Chat to use native Unicode emojis across the platform. All emojis will now be stored and processed as standard Unicode characters directly in the database.

Why this change

Emojione introduced an additional abstraction layer (shortcodes + image mapping) that increases complexity, impacts performance, and limits interoperability with modern protocols.

By adopting native Unicode emojis, we align Rocket.Chat with current standards used across messaging platforms and protocols.

Performance Improvements

• Reduced payload size: Unicode emojis are significantly smaller than image-based representations or shortcode mappings.
• Faster rendering: Native emojis are rendered directly by the client/OS, eliminating image lookups and replacements.
• Lower processing overhead: No need for parsing, conversion, or maintaining emoji dictionaries.
• Database efficiency: Storing raw Unicode reduces storage complexity and improves query performance.

Improved Compatibility (Matrix & Open Protocols)

• Matrix-native support: Matrix uses Unicode emojis by default. This change ensures seamless compatibility with Matrix federation.
• No translation layer needed: Eliminates the need to convert between Emojione shortcodes and Matrix events.
• Better interoperability: Messages retain their original emoji representation across federated systems and external clients.
• Standards alignment: Moves Rocket.Chat closer to protocol-native communication without proprietary transformations.

Developer & Maintenance Benefits

• Simplifies the codebase by removing emoji parsing/mapping logic
• Reduces dependency on third-party emoji libraries
• Easier to maintain and extend
• Fewer edge cases when handling emoji rendering across platforms

Migration Notes

• Existing messages using Emojione shortcodes will NOT be converted to their corresponding Unicode equivalents.
• Emojis will now be different in each OS.
• Custom emojis remain unaffected.

Result

A simpler, faster, and more interoperable emoji system that:

• Improves performance across clients and backend
• Reduces technical debt
• Enables cleaner Matrix federation
• Aligns Rocket.Chat with modern messaging standards

CORE-1980

[dionisio-bot]

Looks like this PR is not ready to merge, because of the following issues:

• This PR is missing the 'stat: QA assured' label

Please fix the issues and try again

If you have any trouble, please check the PR guidelines

[changeset-bot]

⚠️ No Changeset found

Latest commit: 3e18036

Merging this PR will not cause a version bump for any packages. If these changes should not result in a new version, you're good to go. If these changes should result in a version bump, you need to add a changeset.

This PR includes no changesets

When changesets are added to this PR, you'll see the packages that this PR includes changesets for and the associated semver types

Click here to learn what changesets are, and how to add one.

Click here if you're a maintainer who wants to add a changeset to this PR

[coderabbitai]

Important

Review skipped

Draft detected.

Please check the settings in the CodeRabbit UI or the .coderabbit.yaml file in this repository. To trigger a single review, invoke the @coderabbitai review command.

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 319bebf1-33f6-4802-81cf-fd17d066e1fb

You can disable this status message by setting the reviews.review_status to false in the CodeRabbit configuration file.

Use the checkbox below for a quick retry:

• 🔍 Trigger review

---

Thanks for using CodeRabbit! It's free for OSS, and your support helps us grow. If you like it, consider giving us a shout-out.

❤️ Share

• X
• Mastodon
• Reddit
• LinkedIn

_{Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands and usage tips.}

[codecov]

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 98.68185% with 22 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ Project coverage is 70.94%. Comparing base (44938fd) to head (3e18036).

Additional details and impacted files

@@             Coverage Diff             @@
##           develop   #39411      +/-   ##
===========================================
+ Coverage    70.55%   70.94%   +0.39%     
===========================================
  Files         3271     3272       +1     
  Lines       116782   118248    +1466     
  Branches     21090    21077      -13     
===========================================
+ Hits         82393    83889    +1496     
+ Misses       32338    32311      -27     
+ Partials      2051     2048       -3     

Flag	Coverage Δ
e2e	60.53% <84.35%> (+0.02%)	⬆️
e2e-api	48.08% <ø> (-0.05%)	⬇️
unit	71.50% <99.05%> (+0.52%)	⬆️

Flags with carried forward coverage won't be shown. Click here to find out more.

🚀 New features to boost your workflow:

• ❄️ Test Analytics: Detect flaky tests, report on failures, and find test suite problems.
• 📦 JS Bundle Analysis: Save yourself from yourself by tracking and limiting bundle sizes in JS merges.

[ggazzo]

@copilot when inserting an emoji using the picker or autocomplete, use the UTF-8 encoding unless it's a custom emoji,
When you're typing and finish the emoji name, also replace it with UTF-8.

[Copilot]

@ggazzo I've opened a new pull request, #39432, to work on those changes. Once the pull request is ready, I'll request review from you.

[MartinSchoeler]

Whenever the user adds an emoji using the emoji picker, the result should be an unicode character being added to the message composer, only show the shortcode as fallback for custom emojis or emojis that don't have an unicode counterpart

Steps to reproduce:

Open emoji picker
Select an emoji

Expected behavior:

An unicode emoji character should be added. (Example 🙈)

Actual behavior:

A shortname is added. (Example 🙈)

[ggazzo]

Whenever the user adds an emoji using the emoji picker, the result should be an unicode character being added to the message composer, only show the shortcode as fallback for custom emojis or emojis that don't have an unicode counterpart

Steps to reproduce:

Open emoji picker Select an emoji

Expected behavior:

An unicode emoji character should be added. (Example 🙈)

Actual behavior:

A shortname is added. (Example 🙈)

@copilot

[Copilot]

@ggazzo I've opened a new pull request, #39474, to work on those changes. Once the pull request is ready, I'll request review from you.