Help – Rocket

This page will help you with:

• Rocket stopped working or Rocket doesn’t get triggered
• Snippet variables in Rocket Pro
• Everything is in the “Custom” category
• Fixing Rocket activation issues by extending your license
• Requesting a refund
• Rocket, Safari, and Chrome – browser control
• Disabling Rocket in Chrome DevTools
• Setting up trigger keys
• Disabling Rocket for Visual Studio Code (VSCode)
• Disabling Rocket for IntelliJ IDEA
• Adding custom gifs
• Licensing issues
• My contact details

Rocket stopped working

Occasionally, macOS will stop delivering messages to Rocket so it can’t be triggered. This means that when you type “:thu” Rocket won’t appear. Sometimes this is fixed automatically by the OS, but you can take the following steps to fix it manually.

1. Quit Rocket via the 🚀 menu bar icon.
2. Open System Preferences and select Security & Privacy.
3. Select Privacy in the tab bar and Accessibility in the left hand pane.
4. Click the lock in the bottom left corner, confirm your authentication.
5. In the list in the right hand pane, locate and select Rocket, then delete it by clicking the ‘–’ icon.
6. Close System Preferences.
7. Reboot your Mac
8. Open Rocket, it will prompt you to complete the setup tutorial which will re-enable Accessibility access.

Still not working? The causes are often quite varied depending on your system, your OS, and what apps are running. Here's a list of things that you can try that have worked for other people.

• Make sure there aren't any other apps running that will try to use secure input or interrupt regular keyboard events, e.g. Keybase, Lastpass, Bitwarden
• Make sure Rocket's trigger key is what you expect & you have the correct "double key" trigger setting for what you expect
• Make sure you are using a standard keyboard layout and the trigger key matches with your keyboard layout
• People have run an SMC and NVRAM reset and that has fixed their issue
• People have fixed the problem by removing extraneous apps from their macOS accessibility settings
• Make sure you aren't trying to use Rocket in a VM (e.g. via Parallels or VirtualBox)
• Make sure SIP is enabled if that has been disabled previously
• While testing these changes, make sure you're using Rocket in a "standard" macOS app, e.g. TextEdit and without any external displays/only a single monitor setup
• Deleting my trigger key, changing it to something else, and then resetting it to the original

What variables can I use in my snippets in Rocket Pro?

You can use variables to insert the current date and time in your snippets in Rocket Pro.

Add {{ variable_name }} to your snippet content, and this variable will be replaced with the current date or time in the specified format when the snippet expansion occurs.

Notes:

• The spaces between the braces and the variable name are required.
• You can add multiple variables, along with any other text or emoji, in your snippet content, e.g. you could have a snippet with content like ⭐ Today: {{ best_date }} at {{ time_short }}

Date/time variables that match your locale

These variables will expand in the date or time format that matches your system’s locale settings, not necessarily the format shown in the table.

{{ date_short }}

{{ date_medium }}

{{ date_long }}

{{ date_full }}

{{ time_short }}

{{ time_medium }}

{{ time_long }}

{{ time_full }}

Fixed-format date/time variables

These variables will always expand to the same format, regardless of locale.

{{ date_time_iso }}

{{ best_date }}

{{ best_time }}

{{ time_24h }}

Everything is in the “Custom” category

For a couple of versions of Rocket, there was a bug where emoji would be imported into the incorrect category in the Browse & Search window. Here’s how you can fix it. (Unfortunately your Rocket database will be deleted in this process, so you have to re-add any custom emoji or snippets.)

1. Make sure you’re on the latest version of Rocket by clicking the 🚀 menu bar icon and selecting “Check for Updates”
2. Quit Rocket via the 🚀 menu bar icon.
3. Open Finder, press ⌘⇧G (Command-Shift-G)
4. Enter “~/Library/Application Support/Rocket/” and hit Go
5. Delete the database file by right-clicking the “rocket.db” file and click “Move to Trash”
6. Open Rocket again

Extend your Rocket license

By default, Rocket licenses can be activated on two Macs. However, you can extend this for an additional two Macs free of charge. Fill out this form to request an additional license, and email me if you need more than that 😄

Requesting a refund

If you want to request a refund for Rocket, you can do so via this form.

Rocket, Safari, and Chrome – browser control

Rocket has a neat feature where it can be disabled on websites that already have an emoji picker. Some websites that have this are Trello, Github, and Slack. To implement this feature, Rocket queries the active web browser to find out what the current website is. It does so through AppleScript.

What’s new in Mojave?
Starting from macOS Mojave, Rocket lets you control whether you want Rocket to have this level of access to your web browsers. In general, Rocket will keep working either way, it just won’t be able to disable itself on certain websites.

What does Rocket do with AppleScript and AppleEvent access?
Rocket queries the browser’s web page URL. That’s it. It’s used purely to implement this feature. We don’t collect, store, or transmit any other data.

Why does Rocket need Finder access?
Rocket needs control over the Finder to figure out which browsers you have installed and which one of them is active. It doesn’t use its Finder access for anything else. (To be honest, we wish Rocket didn’t need access to the Finder, but it’s a technical limitation.)

Why does Rocket need System Events access?
If you have the "Start Rocket at Login" preference enabled, Rocket uses System Events to add a login item.

Disabling Rocket in Chrome DevTools

Secret feature: If you go Rocket Preferences > Advanced and add "chrome-devtools" to the disabled websites list, it should disable Rocket in the DevTools window. This is a super hidden feature so it could break any time though -- and also it only works in Chrome's "popped out window" inspector mode.

Trigger keys

Trigger keys, followed by the start of an emoji name, are used to activate Rocket. For example “:wave” uses the trigger key ":". Rocket expects trigger keys to be a single punctuation mark. I’ve found that “:”, “(”, and “+” work best.

Disabling Rocket for Visual Studio Code

In Rocket’s preferences, select Visual Studio Code via the disabled apps list app picker. This will add ‘Electron’ to the list. Double-click the ‘Electron’ entry and change it to ‘Code’. Rocket will be disabled in Visual Studio Code.

Disabling Rocket for IntelliJ IDEA

In Rocket’s preferences, select IntelliJ IDEA via the disabled apps list app picker. This will add ‘idea’ to the list. Double-click the ‘idea’ entry and change it to ‘IntelliJ IDEA’. Rocket will be disabled in IntelliJ IDEA.

Adding custom gifs

Custom gifs and images can be added to Rocket once it has been licensed.

After you purchase Rocket, you will be emailed a link to download a collection of gifs.

1. Download the zip file from the link.
2. Extract the contents of the zip file.
3. Move the newly-created folder to a permanent location, for example in your Pictures folder. Rocket needs to read these files off your computer to insert gifs and images.
4. Open Rocket’s Browse & Search window via the menu bar icon, click the plus icon, and select gifs. Then click Add, and locate the folder you downloaded and extracted in the previous step.
5. You can add multiple files to Rocket with Command-A or by shift-clicking on the first and last file to select all files in the folder.
6. Click Add to add the files to Rocket’s shortcut list

Your gifs should now be available—take a look around using the browser!

If you have any questions or issues, please contact me.

Licensing issues

Please don’t hesitate to contact me on Twitter or via email to ask for a refund or if you have any licensing issues.

Contact details

Feel free to contact me any time on Twitter or via email—I’d love to hear from you!