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I'm using El Capitan and I want to change emoji shortcut which is ctrl+cmd+space. I want to change it to two buttons? Is it possible?

techraf
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fire_ecologist
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3 Answers3

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This will work everywhere that Emoji & Symbols has a menu item...

  • System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts
  • Click 'All Applications'
    (hidden in the picture)
  • Click +
  • Type Emoji & Symbols in the first box
  • Type your replacement trigger in the second
  • Click Add

As noted in comments, Cmd/Space is usually used for Spotlight. I chose this almost at random & discarded after the picture was taken.

enter image description here

Tetsujin
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    ⌘Space is however used by Spotlight (and also to switch keyboard layouts priori to El Capitan) – Tom Gewecke Mar 09 '16 at 15:58
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    For sure - I just picked something almost at random & discarded it after I'd taken the shot. – Tetsujin Mar 09 '16 at 16:12
  • In spanish the Menu Title is: "Emojis y símbolos" – DanielBlazquez Oct 09 '19 at 12:12
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    Big Sur 11.1 Beta (20C5048k) ... have needed this again.. so still relevant in Dec 2020. – Jim Morrison Dec 02 '20 at 05:56
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    The native shortcut for emojis is cmd+control+space. But, sometimes, it doesn't work well anymore, I can't figure out why. Has to do with focus or something. – Vadorequest Jan 29 '22 at 11:02
  • This method seem to work, but it's very flaky. You basically never know if shortcut will work or not. For me it is so unstable that I gave up on this approach – nZeus Aug 16 '23 at 08:39
  • Works great for me on MacOS 13.6. I used ctrl-opt-cmd-space to avoid conflicts with other shortcuts. – jakub.g Oct 29 '23 at 10:53
  • Confirmed this works in MacOS 14.x Sonoma where Emoji keyboard default has been changed to use a Fn key. If you're like me using a mechanical keyboard with no Fn key, this is the solution! – Wray Bowling Jan 15 '24 at 21:27
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Personally, on macOS 13.6, I bound fn to display the emoji picker:

In Keyboard, there's a setting called Press fn to where you can choose among others Show Emoji & Symbols.

It works well for me on the MacBook itself, although the drawback is that I also have an external keyboard that doesn't have the fn. For that case, I also bound another shortcut, as per Tetsujin's answer.

Screenshot of the Keyboard settings in macOS 13.6 with the 'Press fn key to' option highlighted

agarza
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jakub.g
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1

As a quick add-on to Tetsujin’s great answer, you could use Karabiner Elements to remap it to a single key if you wished.

Currently I’ve reassigned Caps Lock to showing the emoji picker.

Simon
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  • Hey @Simon, I was looking to do the same. Can you share how you did it? – Farzad Feb 04 '22 at 13:41
  • @Farzad As this is some time ago, I can’t remember exactly how I did it with Karabiner, since I’m not using that method anymore. But I’m pretty sure you could make a ‘complex modification’ (with some help from Google) so that one keypress triggers several others. Right now I’m using the fn key to trigger the emoji menu. That can be achieved under Keyboard in System Preferences. Look for the little globe icon. – Simon Feb 10 '22 at 07:22