How can you disable the "smart" emoji suggestions (macOS Sonoma)

Really want a way to disable this! The suggestions are almost always wrong, where as before it would take you to the search box and you could just type what you wanted.

Current "forced" suggestions is very disorienting by comparison.

Please remove this feature. It's janky and 20 steps backward in the wrong direction.

Every time I try to use an emoji it always fails. The wrong emojis pop up, and then when i try to show the full panel with another keystroke, the whole thing disappears.

The whole idea is to make us type emojis faster - not with extra clicks and buggy behaviors.

I'm not usually complaining about features, but this one is a strong contender for the most annoying award.

+1 for this. I detest the emoji suggestions. The main reason it is broken for me is that I often want to use an emoji that is expressive of an emotion or entire sentence at the end of the sentence, but the emoji picker only suggests emoji for the last word typed. If you do the Ctrl + CMD + space shortcut twice, the full picker comes up, but why should I have to add another step? 😠 This should be optional.

Agree this feature should be optional. I have found similar threads on Reddit and Stack Exchange, but no one has found the secret setting (if it exists) to turn this off.

This feature is very frustrating.

My frustration comes after initiating the "FREQUENTLY USED & FAVOURITES image.

To select the one I want, I have to double-click it, which is not a big deal, BUT trying to remove the suggestion box from the screen is a nightmare (for me).

The whole Mac interface is getting more WOKE and bloated with updates. I don't need ethnically appropriate emojis or animations & I wish there was a way to dumb it down.

I too loathe this design decision. It also looks particularly horrible on web browsers (at least Brave):

I have found a workaround tho; if you hit the shortcut TWICE it will show the large, original picker.

Annoying but at least there is a way to get around it till Apple realizes they shipped something they shouldn't have

I don't use the emoji picker for text replacement. I use it for punctuating text. Therefore, suggestions are pretty much always wrong. I'm not so basic that I would type "bananas🍌." I'm the guy who writes "bananas🙊."

Please add a preference to allow me to disable replacement and use the emoji picker how I like.🗿🕹️

Personally, I will wait for the 14.1 Beta to drop or maybe the 14.x to drop before I will get on my Soap Box and contact Apple.

Though, have Pulled the Trigger on Mail application frequently take my e-mail account ( iCloud ) Off-Line for not apparent reason

Using Fibre Optic connection and all other web services are work just fine

You can actually disable this feature via feature flag.

Open the terminal app, put in this command and reboot:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/UIKit.plist emoji_enhancements -dict-add Enabled -bool NO

(Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/16wzdk9/is_there_a_way_to_turn_off_the_new_emoji/)

I logged in for the first time ever in these forums just to say that I also completely, entirely and utterly despise this feature, and I hope sooner than later that this is fully removed.

dana woodman wrote:

dear Steve Job's ghost, please grant me the power to turn off this **** feature

Ghosts aren't real, and Apple doesn't read here for feedback or suggestions. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

Must admit sometimes it does suggest and sometimes it does not.

No really patterned I can see though 😂

This is driving me up the wall and I'm seriously considering downgrading back to Ventura because of this. What a terrible, terrible uncontrollable feature that nobody ever asked for.

Ahhh! To whoever posted the screenshot, that worked perfectly! Thank you!

System Settings - Keyboard - Press "globe" key to - DO NOTHING

I would not have guessed that (as I don't use the "globe" key but use a keystroke combination.)

Thank you again whoever answered!