Entering emoji takes two clicks

For a long time, entering emoji on MacOS has required two clicks (at least!).

This is what I do:

  1. Press Control-Command-Space to bring up the emoji picker (which comes straight up)
  2. Click on the required emoji.
  3. The emoji selected disappears…and nothing is entered.
  4. Repeat steps 1-3 again, and if I click on the same emoji, the emoji is entered.

This seems to happen in every app.

Does this happen to anyone else? Any ideas on how to fix?

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A common solution is to use a dedicated app or automation workflow for this.

I use an emoji pack with Alfred, for instance.

A popular standalone solution is Rocket:

Edit: After rereading in more detail, I see that you’re actually talking about a bug with the macOS emoji picker. While my suggestions won’t directly help with that, I still think they’re better options for using emoji on a Mac than the built-in one!

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I have had the same issue - pretty annoying, but at least for my case I seem to have a possible solution:
As I mostly use Trackpads - either on my Macbook Pro or Magic Trackpad on my iMac - I always use tap-to-click instead of a real press. But this seems to be the problem for me because when I just tap-to-Click on the Emoji I want to enter in the emoji picker nothing gets added and I have to call the emoji picker again (I think this is what you described?); on the other hand when I deliberately press-to-click on the trackpad when selecting an emoji, the emoji gets added correctly 10/10 times.
I haven’t changed any settings for this and it was more by accident I found this solution for me, but on both machines this issue seems gone for me.

Are you using a trackpad or a mouse? I haven’t used a mouse for a long time so can’t say anything about that scenario. Maybe worth a try in case you are using a Trackpad as well?!

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I second Rocket as a great solution and definitely better than the default Mac integration, which is quite awful with or without bugs.

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I haven’t run into this issue personally in macOS Monterey 12.3.1.

In any case, a possible workaround is to:

  1. Use the arrow keys to select the emoji that you’d like to enter.
  2. Press Return to insert the emoji.

Generally speaking, I find it’s more efficient to use the arrow keys than to reach for the mouse/trackpad.

I hope this helps!

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This seems to be the issue. I use ‘tap to click’ on a magic trackpad (the one with two AA batteries) but just tried clicking ‘properly’ and it inserted the emoji straight away. (And, as @timstringer mentioned below, keyboard navigation is reliable too…I didn’t know the pop-up was keyboard navigable!)

Thanks @JensV

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As has been mentioned, Rocket is the best app for this and most linear/fastest way to get emojis on Mac.

Alfred also has the emoji pack and other emoji workflows that are slightly slower, but I prefer them because…well… I love using Alfred!