Native <select> defers dropdown direction to the browser, which on mobile
routinely opens upward and hides countries behind the keyboard. Replaced
with a custom combobox that always opens DOWNWARD (absolute positioned
below the trigger) with a search input at top — at 150 countries a
scrollable list is unusable without search anyway.
COUNTRIES list expanded from 60 → 152 entries: every country with a
meaningful diaspora, including Russia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka,
Cyprus, Malta, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Iran, Iraq,
Lebanon, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Ethiopia,
Tanzania, Uganda, Senegal, Ghana, Madagascar, Cameroon, Sri Lanka,
Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the rest. Serbia was already in
the prior list — just unfindable without search.
Bonus: flag emojis computed from ISO-3166 alpha-2 codes (no asset files).
Search matches name + code + dial-prefix so "+41" or "CH" both find
Switzerland.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
