lurkertech.com → Gmail subject line emoji roach motel

Gmail Subject Line Emoji Roach Motel

by Chris Pirazzi

• What Is It?
• Where Is the Latest Version?
• How to Use It?
• What To Expect
• Licensing
• Code Internals and Future Features

What Is It?

I hate the way spammy companies like eBay, Amazon, various dating sites, and many other lowlifes are now feeling entitled to spam our inbox with emails whose subject line contains emoji characters (and other Unicode sequences that generate pictures).

These spams selfishly take undeserved, non-consensual prominence in our email boxes by showing up as bold icons (in some browsers, colored icons, and in extreme cases, animated icons). In reality, these glaring warts of visual noise are nothing but technicolor spam cockroaches.

Initially it was just viagra/SEO spam clowns sending those types of emails, which went straight into our spam folders and out of our sight. But now the big companies are getting in on the action, and using it on emails that we need to keep in our Inbox.

Google offers no way to eliminate these cockroaches, so here is a Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey script to do it.

It's the "Gmail Subject Line Emoji Roach Motel": emojis check in, but they don't check out!

Where Is the Latest Version?

Right on this page, in the next section...

How to Use It?

This script works in:

• Greasemonkey in Firefox
• Tampermonkey in Chrome (and probably most other browsers)
• ...probably also Violentmonkey in various browsers

First, you have to download one of those monkey extensions in your web browser, by going to your browser's "Add-Ons" or "Extensions" screen and searching for the name of the extension and installing it. Scripts for those monkey extensions can give you all kinds of cool features.

Then, you load this script into that extension by simply clicking this link:

The script will only run when you visit mail.google.com and of course you can always turn off the script in the menu for your monkey extension. When you first install the script, you will need to reload gmail or open a new gmail tab to see the effect.

What To Expect

This script does not modify your actual email, or delete or move any email messages. It simply prevents certain objectionable characters from being displayed while on the main gmail screen. If you turn off the script, all those characters come back.

This script should not slow down your gmail experience at all.

This script should only eliminate cockroaches in the subject line of emails in gmail's main screen (the screen where you see many different emails listed for one "mailbox"/label/folder), not the gmail screen showing one particular email with its subject and body.

This script should exterminate cockroaches in both the email title and the short snippet of the email body that appears on the same line.

There are two general types of emoji cockroaches that this script exterminates:

• HTML-image-based cockroaches (including the horrible animated ones): this script eliminates image-based cockroaches before you have to see them.

• Unicode cockroaches: The script exterminates these a few seconds after gmail loads, so you get the pleasure of seeing them disappear. There might be a technical way to eliminate this type from the start, but I haven't found it yet. When new mails with these cockroaches arrive, those cockroaches too will take a few seconds to be exterminated. Similarly, when you switch to a new folder, it may take a few seconds for cockroaches in messages of that folder to die.

If you find a cockroach that has escaped extermination, forward the entire email (not a screen shot: a screen shot does not have enough information to identify the cockroach) to cockroaches@lurkertech.com.

Licensing

The source code to the script is available unobfuscated, and you are welcome to copy, modify, and distribute it under the terms of the GNU AGPL, which includes providing credit and a link back to this page whether you use the script as-is or modify it.

Code Internals and Future Features

See the comments inside the script itself.