Picker does not re-render when exceptEmojis or data changes (Web Component v5.6.0)

[saraOrkide]

Hi team,

We are integrating emoji-mart v5 Web Component Picker into our React application with a dynamic custom search filtering logic. Our goal is to:

Dynamically filter emojis based on user input (searchValue)

Pass exceptEmojis to hide unwanted emojis from the picker dynamically

Avoid using the internal search input and instead control visible emojis ourselves

❗️ Problem
Currently:

When we update exceptEmojis the picker does not re-render.

We tried:

Destroying and recreating the picker instance

Calling init({ data }) again with modified data

Using a wrapper component with dynamic keys to force remount

However, the picker always uses the previously cached emoji data (SearchIndex global singleton). Even after:

await init({ data: newData });
The picker displays the previous data, not the updated filtered data.

reset() on SearchIndex empties the index and disables search altogether.

🔬 Expected Behavior
When passing updated data or a new exceptEmojis prop, we expect:

The picker to re-render with updated visible emojis

The SearchIndex or internal data cache to reset and rebuild based on new data

🔍 Observed Behavior
Picker only uses the first initialized data

Changes in exceptEmojis or data do not reflect without a full page reload

⚠️ Limitation
Because of this singleton cache behavior:

We cannot implement dynamic filtering use cases

Users see stale emojis after changing filters or search input

💡 Possible Solutions
We understand that the Web Component uses a global singleton. Potential solutions could be:

Exposing a forceReinit() method to reinitialize the SearchIndex with new data

Allowing the Picker to accept a data prop reactively

Documenting the limitation explicitly and suggesting recommended patterns for dynamic search & filtering without internal search input

✅ Environment
emoji-mart version: v5.6.0

Framework: React (using as Web Component)

🙏 Request
Could you please advise:

Is there an officially supported way to dynamically update emojis shown in Picker?

Or should we fallback to building a custom emoji grid with emoji-mart data for this use case?

Thank you for the amazing library. Looking forward to your guidance to implement this feature optimally.