"Emoji & Symbols" no longer coming up after Sequoia update.

I had this issue for a while now. I turned off Apple Intelligence (System settings » Apple Intelligence & Siri), and since then it works again both with fn+E and control+cmd+space 🤷‍♂️

Hope this helps 🙂

FINALLY found the cause to the same issue I've been having related to this. Turns out that our WebRoot Antivirus has a "Secure Keyboard Entry" enabled by default if you Click the Webroot SecureAnywhere icon in the menu bar and then Pause Secure Keyboard Entry It WORKS again.

You can disable this in the SecureAnywhere - Advanced Settings, but you'll get a warning about being vulnerable.

Here is the LINK where I found this fix!

Good luck all!

I ran into the issue more than once, too. It seems to be related to Secure Keyboard Entry. In my case a password manager triggers this mode when it's locked, despite being in the background and hence not having focus on the password entry input. I wouldn't be surprised if other applications trigger this as well, such as a VPN client.

Once I close the application that triggers Secure Keyboard Entry, the fn key and Ctrl+Cmd+Space keyboard shortcuts work again and the emoji/symbols window shows up.

I'll also report this to Apple as it seems a bug to me that the emoji/symbols window stays hidden when Secure Keyboard Entry is active, although I can imagine that this is a side effect of how it is implemented.

To check whether Secure Keyboard Entry is triggered (although it won't tell which application caused that), the Terminal app on macOS can be used. See Terminal User Guide for details.

I had the same problem with Fn, Control-Command-Space and Fn E all failing to bring up the Emoji keyboard on my iMac. It had worked fine until a few weeks ago and I have spent hours rebooting into Safe Mode, etc, etc. Finally I have discovered my issue, which might be a help to others. I am running Webroot SecureAnywhere (recommended by my Bank). If you are doing the same, to get the emoji keyboard to work, you need to 'Pause Secure Keyboard Entry' by clicking the green W at the right hand top of the screen. Once this is paused, the Emoji keyboard should respond to short cuts. Just bear in mind that you will need to 're-set' the pause every time you reboot.

+1 for 6x6

Control + Command + Space works for us using Logitech keyboards with our Mac mini's.

Yes, that works. Thanks, I got it working buy Re-booting.

😫 GaryReginald, I am afraid rebooting is going to be the solution. I have hundreds!!! of Chrome tabs in several workspaces that will conflate in a singular workspace upon reboot—this is gonna be a drag. My current workaround is opening messages and clicking the emoji button (Twitter works like this, too, but that's a stupid use case.)

Until I reboot (and hope for the best), the emoji picker is completely unresponsive via the menu, keyboard, or shortcuts in all applications. I can't even "Hide Emojis & Symbols" (cuz it aint acitve!), but the menu keeps indicating it is. After several searches, I did things like activate a Japanese keyboard input, and omg.. whatever. Doing stuff like this does impact the emoji picker's state, in that it will stop saying, "Hide…" and on occasion, an emoji picker will pop up inline (like in a TextEdit doc with Japanese keyboard, lol.). Those changed states are primarily fleeting (like one click and the bug is back) and unreliable, even for a temporary workaround.

I use control + command + Space to open the Character Viewer. Have you tried that keyboard shortcut?

Tom Gewecke wrote:

Any luck with the ones in the Sequoia user guide?

fn + E works for me in macOS Sequoia (iMac 2019 with Magic Keyboard.) I guess old habits die hard (control + command + Space). I'll try to rewire my brain for fn + E...

Hello all, I had a similar problem. I was not able to open Emoji&Symbols panel (Fn+e) and also not able to open the small panels with accented characters by holding the key (e.g. "u", "e" etc.). The probable bug is linked to Siri and Apple Intelligence which is not supported in Czech Republic and other countries.

My remedy is to switch Siri off in the System Settings and reboot. Then you can switch Siri on again.

But the problem returns back after some time. I am not sure but I guess that it is after some application updates (maybe could be one of these: DeepL, ChatGPT, Logi Options+ which work with shortcuts). Maybe somebody knows more.

This keeps happening to me too. A reboot usually fixes it. In my case it is not a keyboard shortcut problem as even using the Edit > Emoji & Symbols menu doesn't work. In the Input menu in the menu bar, I noticed that - rather than Show - it says "Hide Emoji & Symbols", as if it thinks the window is already showing.

After many failed attempts to correct this problem and many failed suggestions (all are appreciated) The update to 15.4.1 fixed the missing Emoji and Symbols window!

den.thed wrote:

Control + Command + Space works for us using Logitech keyboards with our Mac mini's.

Any luck with the ones in the Sequoia user guide?

...I tried to see Emoji in Sequoia, but failed.

I pressed Ctr+Cmd+Space, Fn+E or Edit-Emoji & Symbols from menu - no effect.

Finally, I found the source of the problem. But do not understand the reason.

Emoji does not work when I connect to VPN via AnyConnect...

For Sequoia the default ways to get this are

Use emoji and symbols on Mac - Apple Support