Temly

Temly Disable Emoji completely disables WordPress emoji functionality to improve your website performance by removing:
<ul>
<li>Emoji detection scripts from frontend and admin</li>
<li>Emoji stylesheets from frontend and admin </li>
<li>DNS prefetch requests to emoji CDN servers</li>
<li>TinyMCE emoji plugin from the editor</li>
<li>Email emoji conversion</li>
</ul>
This lightweight plugin requires no configuration – simply activate and enjoy faster page load times.
Features: 
* Removes all emoji-related JavaScript and CSS 
* Eliminates DNS prefetch requests to external emoji servers 
* Works on both frontend and admin areas 
* No settings required – works immediately after activation 
* Compatible with all themes and plugins

Temly Disable Emoji

Completely removes WordPress emoji scripts, styles, and DNS prefetch requests to improve site performance.

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. :)

Temly Disable Emoji vs TinyMCE Smiley Button