Mojito / Guides

Mojito vs Comoji

Two free Mac apps that autocomplete :shortcodes: right at your cursor, the way Slack does. They’re more alike than different, so this page is about the differences, checked against both apps on October 4, 2026.

By Wells Riley, who makes Mojito·Updated October 4, 2026·Comoji 1.1.12, Mojito 1.10.0

Disclosure: I make Mojito. Read this with that in mind. Every Comoji fact here comes from comoji.io, which publishes its own Mojito comparison; where that page is out of date about Mojito, this one says so, with the reason.

Mojito or Comoji: which should you use?

Both are free and do the core job well: type a colon and a few letters in almost any app, and pick an emoji from a list at your cursor. Choose Comoji if you’re still on macOS 13 Ventura, want animated stickers, or want an app that sends no usage data at all. Choose Mojito if you also type symbols like ⌘, °, — and €, want emoji found by meaning, want source code you can read, or want the app in a language other than English.

Mojito vs Comoji at a glance

	Comoji	Mojito
Price	Free	Free
Source	Closed	✓ AGPL-3.0
macOS	13 Ventura or later	14 Sonoma or later
Install	Download	Download or Homebrew
Emoji	: (or another key you pick)	: (or another key you pick)
Search	Names and Slack/Discord codes	Names, codes, and ~8,300 everyday keywords
Symbols	—	✓ :: (⌘ ° — € π ½ →)
GIFs	/gif, from GIPHY	:::, from KLIPY
Stickers	✓ /sticker	—
Emoticons, arrows	—	✓ :) → 🙂, -> → →
Languages	English	19 for the app, 14 for shortcodes
Usage data	None	Anonymous, on by default after a notice, published

Checked October 4, 2026, against Comoji’s features, install, and security pages, and against Mojito’s source. Comoji’s site doesn’t mention searching by keyword.

What they have in common

• Free, with no account, trial, or paid tier.
• A colon opens the picker by default, and both let you change that key. Typing the closing colon (:fire:) inserts the exact match straight away.
• Slack- and Discord-style codes, a default skin tone, custom aliases of your own, and results that learn what you use.
• A list of apps and websites to stay out of, which you can edit.
• The same two macOS permissions: Input Monitoring, to notice a shortcode as you type it, and Accessibility, to find your cursor and put the emoji there.
• Signed and notarized downloads that update themselves, on Apple silicon and Intel.

Run one at a time, though. Both listen for a colon, so with both running you’d get two pickers fighting over every :.

Where Comoji is the better pick

• Older Macs. Comoji runs on macOS 13 Ventura; Mojito needs macOS 14 Sonoma.
• Animated stickers. /sticker inserts animated emoji stickers (Google’s Noto set) at your cursor. Mojito has nothing like it.
• No usage data, ever. Comoji says it has no analytics, telemetry, or crash reporter. Mojito’s anonymous usage stats are on by default: it shows a one-time notice before sending anything, and you can decline there or switch them off in Settings.
• A checklist instead of source code. Comoji publishes every server it talks to and a step-by-step guide to checking that yourself with lsof, nettop, or a firewall. If you’d rather test behavior than read code, that’s genuinely useful.
• Stricter defaults for sensitive apps. Comoji stays out of password managers, terminals, and remote-desktop or VM clients out of the box. Mojito skips password fields everywhere and stays out of terminals, but you’d add password-manager and VM apps to its list yourself.

Where Mojito is the better pick

• Symbols. Two colons search hundreds of symbols: ::cmd for ⌘, ::degree for °, ::em_dash for —, plus currency, math, arrows, fractions, and Greek. Comoji has no symbol search; its :: opens an emoji browser.
• Search by meaning. On top of names and codes, Mojito knows about 8,300 everyday words, so :deploy finds 🚀 and :ghosting finds 👻.
• Source you can read. Mojito is AGPL-3.0 open source, including the code that handles your keystrokes. Comoji is closed source and says it has declined to open its input path “for now.”
• The small conversions. :) becomes 🙂, <3 becomes ❤️, and -> becomes →, with no picker at all.
• Favorites and the system shortcut. :? opens favorites you pin. Mojito can also take over ⌃ ⌘ Space and the 🌐 key with its own emoji browser, and Shift-Return inserts several emoji without closing the picker.
• Your language. The app is translated into 19 languages, and shortcodes work in 14 of them alongside English, matched to your Mac’s languages: German speakers can type :daumen_hoch for 👍. Comoji is English-only.
• Allowlist mode. Flip the exclusion list around so Mojito runs only in the apps you name.

GIFs: GIPHY vs KLIPY

Both search GIFs from your cursor and paste the real .gif file, so it animates when it lands. Comoji’s /gif searches GIPHY. Mojito’s ::: searched GIPHY too until version 1.10.0 on October 1, 2026, and now searches KLIPY, the GIF service co-founded by one of Tenor’s co-founders (more on that in what happened to Tenor). Mojito’s GIF search also works in apps it otherwise steps aside for, like Slack and Discord; you can switch that off.

Privacy and what reaches the network

Both apps read keystrokes on your Mac and don’t send them anywhere. GIF search is the exception in both: the words you search for go to the GIF service. Beyond that:

About Comoji’s comparison page

Comoji’s own Mojito comparison, checked on September 11, 2026, is mostly fair. Four points have changed since, or weren’t right:

• “Mojito queries Giphy.” True when it was written. Mojito switched GIF search to KLIPY in 1.10.0, on October 1, 2026.
• “The stand-down list is Mojito’s call rather than yours.” It’s yours. Mojito ships with a list of apps and sites to stay out of, and you can add, remove, or flip it into allowlist mode in Settings.
• No custom trigger key. Mojito’s emoji, symbol, GIF, and favorites triggers have all been customizable since version 1.5.
• Permissions not published. A fair point about our homepage. They’re Input Monitoring and Accessibility, explained above and in the README.

Mojito vs Comoji questions