This is a simple PowerShell script and isn't a full-fledged app but it satisfies most of your requirements
Sample GUI output:
Sample console output:
PS D:\Unicode> Select-UniChar "cross.*mark|check" | Select-Object -First 8
Character Designation Name
--------- ----------- ----
⍻ U+237B NOT CHECK MARK
⑇ U+2447 OCR AMOUNT OF CHECK
☑ U+2611 BALLOT BOX WITH CHECK
✅ U+2705 WHITE HEAVY CHECK MARK
✓ U+2713 CHECK MARK
✔ U+2714 HEAVY CHECK MARK
❌ U+274C CROSS MARK
❎ U+274E NEGATIVE SQUARED CROSS MARK
PS D:\Unicode> Select-UniChar "alpha" | Select-Object -First 8
Character Designation Name
--------- ----------- ----
ɑ U+0251 LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA
ɒ U+0252 LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED ALPHA
Ά U+0386 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH TONOS
Α U+0391 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA
ά U+03AC GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH TONOS
α U+03B1 GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA
ᵅ U+1D45 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL ALPHA
ᶐ U+1D90 LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH RETROFLEX HOOK
How to make it work
In PowerShell run explorer (Get-ChildItem $PROFILE).Directory to open the profile folder
Download the latest UnicodeData.txt from the Unicode database and save to the above folder
Run Notepad $PROFILE and add the below lines to the end
function Select-UniChar([string]$pattern) {
Select-String $pattern .\UnicodeData.txt | ForEach-Object {
$start = $_.Line.IndexOf(';')
$end = $_.Line.IndexOf(';', $start + 1)
$codepoint = $_.Line.Substring(0, $start)
[PSCustomObject]@{
Character = [char]::ConvertFromUtf32([uint32]"0x$codepoint")
Designation = "U+" + $codepoint
Name = $_.Line.Substring($start + 1, $end - $start - 1)
}
}
}
Now every time you open PowerShell you can use Select-UniChar function to find the characters. For example Select-UniChar "dash"
You can run . $profile to source the updated profile to make the new code available immediately in the current shell
The function receives a regex so you'll need some regex knowledge for advanced searching, but it's trivial to change the script to do a wildcard match or a simple text match
If you want to have a GUI view to scroll, filter, etc. then pass the output to Out-GridView, for example
Select-UniChar 'arrow' | Out-GridView
Note that lots of characters won't be displayable if you use the default terminal for PowerShell. You must use Windows Terminal or a better terminal instead, and possibly install more fonts to show more Unicode characters. Anyway regardless of how it's shown in the terminal, copying it still works perfectly
Limitations:
The output isn't sorted by usage frequency like when you press Windows+. or Windows+; because that obviously requires a much more complex solution that may need to run as a service
It doesn't work for characters that are combined from multiple code points, for example many characters in complex scripts like Arabic or Indic, or emojis such as
🏃🏻♀️🐱😶 🇻🇳🇺🇸🇬🇧🇯🇵🇩🇪🇫🇷🇪🇺🇺🇳⚑🏴☠️⚧🏳️⚧️🏩💓👨❤️👨👩🏼❤️👨🏽👩🏻❤️💋👩🏿👩👩👦👦👨👩👦👦🏳️🌈👧🏻🤵🏻
It doesn't work for non-English terms like the Windows emoji picker (Looking for chaise won't work even if you're in French locale)
It doesn't do fuzzy matching or word conjugation like many modern smart emoji pickers or IMEs
Some characters might just look as junks because there's no available font for them, but copying them then paste elsewhere still works perfectly
You can also print all characters like this
function Select-AllUniChar([string]$pattern) {
(Select-String $pattern .\UnicodeData.txt | ForEach-Object {
$codepoint = [uint32]"0x$($_.Line.Substring(0, $_.Line.IndexOf(';')))"
[char]::ConvertFromUtf32($codepoint)
} ) -join ', '
}
Demo:
D:\> Select-AllUniChar "gamma"
Ɣ, ɣ, ɤ, ˠ, Ͷ, ͷ, Γ, γ, Ϝ, ϝ, ᴦ, ᵞ, ᵧ, ℽ, ℾ, Ⲅ, ⲅ, 𝚪, 𝛄, 𝛤, 𝛾, 𝜞, 𝜸, 𝝘, 𝝲, 𝞒, 𝞬, 𝟊, 𝟋
Here's a "simpler" version that doesn't require you to download the Unicode character data but it only works for the BMP
$GetUNameDef = @'
[DllImport("C:/Windows/system32/getuname.dll")]
public static extern int GetUName(
UInt16 wCharCode,
[MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] System.Text.StringBuilder lpbuf);
'@
$un = Add-Type -MemberDefinition $GetUNameDef -Name "GetName" `
-PassThru -Namespace Runtime.InteropServices
$name = [Text.StringBuilder]::new(1024)
class CharInfo {
[char]$Character
[string]$Designation
[string]$Name
}
function Select-Char([string]$pattern) {
1..0xFFFF | ForEach-Object { if ($un::GetUName($_, $name) -gt 0) {
$charName = $name.ToString()
if ($charName -like "*$pattern*") {
[CharInfo]@{
Character = $_
Designation = "U+{0:X4}" -f $_
Name = $charName
}
}
} }
}
