Building tiny UI components is where most developers get exposed. But building tiny UI components well - that's where people start paying attention to you. An emoji picker is the perfect example: deceptively small, surprisingly fiddly, and an instant upgrade to any form or chat interface.
In this guide, I'll walk you through how to build a clean, responsive emoji-picker textarea using Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js. No bloated libraries, no dependencies that age like milk, and no "2MB of JavaScript for one dropdown." Just a lightweight, maintainable component you can actually ship.
We'll cover the structure, state management, accessibility considerations, and how to make the component feel like a modern UI pattern rather than a clunky afterthought. By the end, you'll have a drop-in emoji picker you can reuse across projects - and the confidence to extend it with categories, recently-used emojis, or whatever UX flex you want to show off.
If you want to skip straight to implementation, I've included everything you need:
Read the full article and grab the code:
https://lexingtonthemes.com/blog/how-to-build-an-emoji-picker-textarea-with-tailwind-css-and-alpinejs
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