The discussion revolves around adding new tabs to the emoji selector in Discourse, particularly for organizing custom emojis like flags. Steven initially asked if it’s possible to create a dedicated category for emojis, such as a ‘flags’ tab between the ‘#’ and ‘poop’ categories, to improve organization. codinghorror confirmed it’s not currently possible. sam pointed to the relevant code in the emoji toolbar, and Steven shared a plugin solution for custom emoji ordering. bartv later asked if a new tab could be added via the existing emoji browser, and bartv discovered that after adding custom emojis in the admin panel and rebuilding the app, a new tab appears automatically, using the first custom emoji as the icon. Jennifer_Abrams asked if custom emojis can appear first when opening the selector. Steven updated the thread, noting that since May 2020, this is possible via the /admin/customize/emojis page, and recommended a plugin for better control: iunctis-emojis.
For future reference (and after my first visit to the Discourse source code ;-): after adding custom emojis in the admin, just rebuild the app. A custom tab will then be added to the emoji picker and the first custom emoji you created will be used as the tab icon: