Sohaus

Sohaus Clean Emoji Slugs keeps WordPress permalinks clean when editors use emoji in post titles.
By default, WordPress may include emoji or encoded emoji characters in generated slugs. This plugin removes emoji, pictograms, dingbats, variation selectors and related characters from slugs while leaving the original title unchanged.
Example:
❤️ I love WordPress 🩸
Becomes:
i-love-wordpress
The plugin works automatically when a post, page or supported public post type is saved.
<h3>Features</h3>
<ul>
<li>Removes emoji from slugs.</li>
<li>Cleans already encoded emoji in existing slugs when a post is saved, but does not bulk-update old posts automatically.</li>
<li>Keeps emoji in post titles.</li>
<li>Works on save and update.</li>
<li>Supports posts and pages by default.</li>
<li>Does not add database tables.</li>
<li>Does not track users.</li>
<li>Does not send any data to external services.</li>
</ul>

Sohaus Clean Emoji Slugs

Removes emoji and special symbols from WordPress slugs while keeping them in post titles.

Cople

TinyMCE Smiley Button

A nice to have would be to turn the text in the wysiwyg to a smiley. EG. :) <- Would turn into the smiley image after a space is added. A client of ours wants this functionality so i shall send relevant code to do so once i've figured it out. :)

Sohaus Clean Emoji Slugs vs TinyMCE Smiley Button