char_emojis

The char_emojis widget renders exactly like the default single-line text input, with a smiley button appended inside the input group. Clicking the button opens Odoo's shared emoji picker in a popover anchored below the field. Picking an emoji splices its codepoints into the value at the current cursor position, replacing any selected text, then restores focus and moves the cursor past the inserted emoji.

The insertion is done by writing directly to the DOM input and dispatching a synthetic input event followed by a keydown event. The comment in the source explains why: the input event marks the field dirty, and the keydown commits the change so onchange logic fires. The widget is a thin subclass of CharField; everything else, from placeholders to password masking, is inherited unchanged.

Emojis in subject lines are a deliverability and open-rate lever, not a decoration. Marketing teams that A/B test subjects with and without emojis need a way to insert them reliably, and the OS-level emoji shortcuts are inconsistent across Windows, macOS, and Linux desks. Putting the picker inside the field means every user inserts real Unicode emojis the same way, with no copy-paste from external sites that can drag invisible characters along.

That is precisely why the only two core uses are the mass mailing Subject and Preview Text fields. If your team writes campaign subjects, WhatsApp templates, push notification titles, or any short customer-facing string in a custom model, pointing this widget at that field is a two-minute view change that removes a small daily friction.

The core pattern: mass mailing subject

<field name="subject"
       widget="char_emojis"
       placeholder="e.g. New Sale on all T-shirts"
       options="{'dynamic_placeholder': true, 'dynamic_placeholder_model_reference_field': 'mailing_model_real'}"/>

This is the exact configuration Odoo 19 ships on mailing.mailing: emoji button plus dynamic placeholder expressions resolved against the mailing's recipient model.

Minimal use on any char field

<field name="title" widget="char_emojis"/>

No options are required. The picker button appears automatically in edit mode.

The base CharField trims leading and trailing whitespace when committing a value. In Odoo 19, EmojisCharField overrides that with a shouldTrim getter returning false, so the value is saved exactly as typed. The practical effect: a subject ending in a space plus an emoji keeps both, where the plain char widget would have stripped the trailing space. In Odoo 16 the same behavior was wired differently, as a shouldTrim: false prop set in extractProps.

The widget also appends o_field_text to its CSS classes, so it styles like a text field rather than a bare char input. The picker itself is the shared component from web/core/emoji_picker, the same one Discuss uses, positioned below the input. The insertion callback lives in a mixin, EmojisFieldCommon, shared with text_emojis; the char version targets the input element while the text version targets the textarea.

Odoo 20 is expected at Odoo Experience in Brussels, 24 to 26 September 2026. The usual caveat applies: the development branch is unstable, nothing below is a released behavior, and this page will be re-verified against the shipped release.

At the time of writing, the development branch shows only an internal migration of emojis_char_field.js and the shared mixin to the new Owl signal API. Element references move from useRef to signal.ref() and the insertion callback reads the target element through a function call, but no option, registration, or behavior change is visible. XML using char_emojis should carry over unchanged.