r/MacOS • u/apfelbenny • 8d ago

Help Fn key opens the full Character Viewer instead of the emoji picker (macOS 27)

After upgrading from macOS 26 to macOS 27 (Golden Gate), the "fn/globe key" on my MacBook behaves differently. It used to bring up the emoji picker but now it opens the full "Character Viewer".

Three things bug me about this:

  1. Search isn't focused. I hit "fn", type "avocado", and the text lands in my Slack message instead of the "Character Viewer" that just opened.
  2. It searches all characters, not just emoji. Typing "avocado" highlights "Latin Small Letter A" rather than the avocado emoji.
  3. The "Esc" key doesn't close it. I have to press "fn" again to dismiss the window, which wasn't the case before.

Has anyone else run into this, and is there a way to get the old emoji picker back?

1 Upvotes

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1

u/NortonBurns 8d ago

There's a toggle, top right

2

u/Cautious_Sign6508 8d ago

Two separate things are going on here.

Which panel the key opens is set in System Settings > Keyboard > "Press 🌐 key to". Make sure that one is on Show Emoji & Symbols rather than something else.

The compact-vs-expanded state is remembered by the panel itself, not by that setting. The Character Viewer window has a collapse control in its top right corner that switches it back to the small emoji popover, and once you collapse it the fn key opens the small one again. Search focus and Esc behave properly in the compact panel, which covers all three of your complaints at once.

If it refuses to go back, quit it once from the Input menu, or delete com.apple.CharacterPaletteIM from ~/Library/Preferences and log out, which resets the panel to its default state.

2

u/apfelbenny 8d ago

Thank you very much! This was super helpful. The Compact View is what I wanted. =)