MacOS Emoji Picker Sometimes Takes Two Tries to Insert

Hello friends,

I've had a sporadic issue that I've just ignored, until my boss has reported the same issue. When I've had my MacBook Pro running for a few days, closer to a week, and I go to insert emoji using the MacOS emoji picker, the first time I select an emoji it won't insert. If I try a second time immediately after, it will insert. Does this happen to anyone else?

I just reboot, it's like a built in timer for me, "guess it's time to reboot again!" But, for my boss, this is unacceptable, so here I am. She likes to do multi-emoji streaks and I'm just not that type, lol. I have to reboot her laptop for her, and I (try to) do it once a week.

We've notices this happening in Messages, Mail, Signal and Google Chat (the Chrome app). I notice it most often in Chat, but that's probably due to frequency of use, though I don't fully trust Chrome's memory use and this does seem memory related to me. I'm on an M1 Pro (14" 16GB RAM) with Monterey, she's on an M1 MBP (8GB RAM) with Big Sur. My 2016 MBP also did this on Big Sur, I can't say for sure if it happened on Catalina.

Triggering the picker from the function key (which I've recently discovered as the easiest way to summon it), or from Ctl+Cmd+Space always bring it up the picker. It just doesn't always insert the emoji at your cursor, until you try a second time. When it starts doing this, it tends to keep doing it until the next reboot, which always temporary fixes the issue for an undetermined amount of time - at least 3-4 days. And, this boss is executive level, so while you should shut your computer down at least that frequently, it's just not going to happen. After 20 years of IT, I know this is one of those battles I won't win, lol.

This is of course not happening at the moment, so it could be a slow troubleshooting process. I'm mostly here asking to figure out how common this is. If most people are like my users, they never reboot their macs, lol.

Thanks for you time, and cheers!

-Keegan