No accessible way to enter emojis in macOS Ventura, emoji picker is practically unusable with keyboard?

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No accessible way to enter emojis in macOS Ventura, emoji picker is practically unusable with keyboard?

My problem is about entering emojis using a keyboard (the native keyboard of my Macbook, problem is not particularly related to external keyboards).

I know of two ways to do that in basic apps such as iMessage (also applies to any other native text input though).

1) I just learned about the shortcut Control+Command+Space to open the global symbols and emoji picker in any text field.

2) This does the same thing that previously was the default action of a long-press of the Fn key on my MBP 2021 (M1 Pro, 14"). However, I had to disable this long-press action because I need the default function keys more often than brightness and volume controls.

Both shortcuts open this window:

However, the behavior is extremely strange, to the point of making this unusable for me.

1) The window is not initially focused

2) The window breaks CTRL-Tab to switch between apps

3) The window breaks other global shortcuts such as CTRL+Space for Spotlight search

4) Even when focusing the window using the touchpad or a mouse, it still is not navigable using a keyboard. Inserting an emoji by pressing ENTER is not possible. Navigating the emoji list is impossible, only the search field works.

Am I doing something wrong, is this for historical reasons, or is this app just very bug-ridden?

The behavior as present on my device - in my opinion - violates basic accessibility principles and excludes keyboard-only users.

I know there are workarounds such as this one https://github.com/nathanmsmith/macos-emoji-snippets/blob/main/emoji.plist

But in my opinion, this is not what I'd expect of an expensive laptop with an otherwise good user experience.

Keyboard use is important, especially for people who have a motor impairment, injury or for people who just want to type quickly.

There seems to be no other way to enter emojis using the keyboard in e.g. iMessage (like in other apps such as Slack, Mattermost and the like, which use keyboard shortcuts starting with a colon, that are confirmed using the TAB key), this leaves me without any usable way to enter emojis using a keyboard.

Would appreciate any help or comment.

Currently, inserting a simple emoji requires jumping through several hoops and forces me to leave the keyboard, whereas in other apps with their own features for keyboard input on top (even WhatsApp Web!), I only need to enter a colon followed by a couple of letters and the TAB key.

MacBook Pro 14″

Posted on Mar 9, 2023 1:21 PM

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Answer 1

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Phil0124

Level 10

216,422 points

Mar 9, 2023 2:06 PM in response to moritz116

You can click on the icon at the top right corner of the Emoji Picker next to the search field to reduce it to the compact size.

This should then allow you to navigate the emojis using the arrow keys, and entering an emoji into a text field by hitting the enter key when the emoji you want is selected. If the emoji has sub options you can navigate those too with the arrow keys. You can exit the sub options with the escape key. Using the compact view, also lets you exit the Emoji picker with the escape key.

It does not work in the expanded view however.

Once you select the compact view, it should open in that format the next time you invoke it and every time after that.

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Answer 2

etresoft

Level 9

56,124 points

Mar 10, 2023 7:00 AM in response to moritz116

Just to clarify...

There is one important bug/feature that you missed. That will explain some of the confusion about this feature.

This display is app-specific. If you open it for Safari, for example, then it will not appear in any other app. You have to re-open it to use it in a different app. You can have it open in multiple apps, and you'll have multiple windows that appear and disappear as you change the active app. This is my #1 pet-peeve.

Secondly, not all apps are equivalent. The display works better in some apps than others. You can always open it in TextEdit and see how it should work under idea conditions. TextEdit is essentially Apple's "demo" app where they try to properly implement all operating system features. Sadly, no other app, even Apple's own apps, ever reaches TextEdit's level of compatibility with the operating system. If you open the compact window in TextEdit, then you can navigate with the keyboard.

Speaking of apps, Safari is a particularly problematic one. In Safari, each web site behaves differently. For example, this site, an Apple site no less, is not very compatible with Apple's character viewer. You can't navigate with the keyboard, even in compact mode. You can't even drag characters into this window. But other, non-Apple sites, work much better, often equivalent to TextEdit.

Otherwise, all I can tell you is that, these days, Apple designs everything for the iPhone and iPad. Those are the platforms that Apple expects users to have. Mac users are legacy, older users, that very difficult to support. The only time Apple ever makes any changes on the Mac is when there is some very important bug. Otherwise, they just port iOS features to the Mac and let legacy Mac features stagnate and die until they get removed. This is definitely one of those latter features. Switching keyboards and using emoji is much easier on the iPhone and iPad. You'll just have to wait until Apple ports that entire behaviour to the Mac, which they will inevitably do at some point.

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Answer 3

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,036 points

Mar 9, 2023 1:48 PM in response to moritz116

MacOS does not do mouse or keyboard auto-focus on these character panels when launched from an application. There is no changing that fact, and keyboard focus remains on the originating application.
It is cmd+Tab to switch between applications. That does not direct you to the characters panel however.
Spotlight is control+space and it works even when a character panel is already open.
The panel was not designed to be navigable with the keyboard.

Tested: macOS Ventura 13.2.1

Since we are fellow users and the Apple product teams are embargoed from public site participation, you should send direct feedback to the macOS product team. They probably won't respond, but may consider your input for future operating system releases.

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

121,962 points

Mar 10, 2023 4:52 AM in response to moritz116

moritz116 wrote:

The problems I described occur in all applications for me, including Messages. In fact, that app was the main reason for posting, because inserting emojis into a message is a pain without being able to use exclusively the keyboard to do it.

But the workaround provided by Phil0124 seems to solve my problem for this situation.

You may still want to let Apple know about improvements you would like to see in accessibility in this area, via

http://www.apple.com/feedback

Include a link to this discussion so they can see your photos and all the comments.

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Answer 5

moritz116 Author

Level 1

30 points

Mar 10, 2023 5:09 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

I will, thank you!

I just noticed another problem with the compact-view approach. It's better than nothing but it demands using the arrow keys.

When I enter a search, e.g. "smile" or something, there is no way to select from the results without using the mouse/touchpad again.

All of this works flawlessly in other non-native Chat apps, so it shouldn't be hard to implement.

The only thing that works now is exclusively using the arrow keys (which is better than nothing!).

Still, it also seems strange to me that the focus behavior is different between compact and expanded mode.

Will post this thread to Apple for feedback.

To me it still boils down to

> The panel was not designed to be navigable with the keyboard.

And that's just plain annoying.

All of you were of great help to focus my complaint / feature request and to find a workaround for now, thanks again.

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Answer 6

moritz116 Author

Level 1

30 points

Mar 10, 2023 7:24 AM in response to moritz116

Yes I already noticed that some behaviours are app-specific and some features are hit-and-miss.

Also that the emoji picker is somewhat "modal", which made it even more confusing that the window is not focused in the expanded view.

E.g., after applying the modified keyboard layout I was thankfully provided with in this thread,

now I can even tab from search field into the emoji list in Messages. But I don't know if that's a coincidence.

Generally, I like the integration with iOS, but the emoji picker on macOS is really not great.

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Answer 7

moritz116 Author

Level 1

30 points

Mar 9, 2023 11:39 PM in response to VikingOSX

Thank you very much for your response!

Before leaving my feedback with the product team, I want to make sure to have cleared all misunderstandings.

Regarding

I'm curious what is the reasoning behind that? I can't see how this could make sense?
You are of course correct, I mistyped and cmd+Tab was what I meant all along. Thanks for clearing up, I'm coming from Linux + PC keyboard and still sometimes confuse the key names. I use and I meant cmd+Tab for switching applications. The problem here is the combination of 1. and 2. – it seems impossible to bring focus to the emoji picker using the keyboard alone.
Same for Spotlight search, I meant cmd+Space. Again, I can't understand why this stops working as soon as the picker is open.
That's my complaint, I can't see why that is. All other applications that I use which provide their own picker work better.

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Answer 8

moritz116 Author

Level 1

30 points

Mar 9, 2023 11:48 PM in response to Phil0124

Thank you very much, this is a useful workaround for me.

The only problem remaining for me is that emoji search demands I know German names for emojis as German is my input language. This is kind of weird, e.g. searching for "heart", "smiling" or "rocket" does not work.

I'll try to add English as a secondary input language in hope of resolving this.

Edit: This does resolve the problem, so I now have a useful experience.

Thank you very much for taking time to answer.

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Answer 9

moritz116 Author

Level 1

30 points

Mar 9, 2023 11:42 PM in response to dialabrain

The problems I described occur in all applications for me, including Messages. In fact, that app was the main reason for posting, because inserting emojis into a message is a pain without being able to use exclusively the keyboard to do it.

But the workaround provided by Phil0124 seems to solve my problem for this situation.

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Answer 10

etresoft

Level 9

56,124 points

Mar 10, 2023 7:38 AM in response to dialabrain

dialabrain wrote:

Interesting but it doesn't explain why it works for me with Safari and Messages but not TextEdit.

You are an "early adopter" and are probably running some beta version of Ventura. I just answered a similar question where Ventura seems to behave exactly opposite from Monterey. So perhaps that's what you're seeing. I usually use Monterey. The only time I use Ventura is weekdays in the evenings.

I used to even have a Ventura VM I could use to test things, but I got rid of that for one reason or another. I don't remember why. I think I was experimenting with Apple Silicon VMs. Once Apple made it easier to do, and free, the market seems to have bottomed out and now all Apple Silicon VMs are junk. I'm one of those oddballs who would rather pay for a decent product instead of using free junk. I don't even want to bother writing my own because the free junk aspect has ruined the market. Sadly, there just aren't enough oddballs in the world to pay for decent software.

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