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On previous macOS such as Mojave and Catalina, the mappings between emoji unicodes and associated keywords were available to view in files like CharacterPicker and FindReplace in .plists or .strings data formats [1]. These files were found in System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreEmoji.framework/Versions/A/Resources.

On Big Sur, it seems that only the .dat formats of those files are shipped. It is possible to decode these files back into a .plists or .strings format?

[1] Why does ‘freedom’ return the french fries 🍟 emoji?

Sentient
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  • Did you ever get an answer on this? – Jeef May 19 '21 at 19:06
  • @Jeef nope :'( But tell me if you do. – Sentient May 20 '21 at 21:24
  • I'm on an older OS, but what happens if you copy the .dat file to a user-writable location (e.g. your desktop) and run plutil -convert xml1 /path/to/file.dath? Failing that, what is the output of file /path/to/file.dat? – Wowfunhappy Aug 16 '22 at 18:22
  • @Wowfunhappy plutil result: CharacterPicker-en.dat: Property List error: Unexpected character Ñ at line 1 / JSON error: JSON text did not start with array or object and option to allow fragments not set. file result: CharacterPicker-en.dat: data – danronmoon Aug 16 '22 at 22:48
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    It happens that the DAT file consists of (at least) two parts. The first part is a Marisa Trie (starting from "We love Marisa".) It is a set of string keys. The 4 bytes right before the trie is its length. I haven't figured out the second part yet. – Mike Manilone Dec 12 '23 at 11:32
  • This might help in parsing and analyzing .dat files, which could be a first step in decoding them into formats like .plists or .strings.

    Analyzing .dat Files Script

    This script aims to identify repeating patterns in binary files, which could be crucial for understanding the data structure of the .dat files.

     – davidcondrey Mar 24 '24 at 00:02

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