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Socob
Asked: 2020-11-17 16:16:07 +0800 CST

“Emoji Choice” popup (Ctrl-Shift-E) stopped working in 20.10

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In previous versions of Ubuntu, one could press Ctrl-Shift-E in any text input area to activate the “Emoji Choice” popup – see, for example, these answers to “What does [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [e] do, while typing text?” or “How to insert an emoji into a text in Ubuntu 18.04 and later?”. This has several advantages over the “Insert Emoji” (Ctrl-.) method available e. g. in gedit, the main ones being

  • It works with any text input area, not just specific programs like gedit.
  • It not only allows searching and choosing emoji, but any Unicode character.

However, when I try pressing Ctrl-Shift-E in Ubuntu 20.10 (e. g. in gedit or Firefox), nothing happens. I still see the shortcut showing up when running ibus-setup:

ibus-setup window

and in the dconf editor:

dconf-editor window

Was the keyboard shortcut for the “Emoji Choice” popup removed? And how can I get it working again?

shortcut-keys input-method ibus emoji 20.10

4 Answers

  1. Simple solution inspired by @gunnar-hjalmarsson's answer that doesn't requires restarting the session:

    Open a terminal (Ctrl+Shift+T), then paste this:

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-im-module ibus

    Now Ctrl+Shift+E, Space works. :)

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  2. Best Answer

    I found these earlier answers:

    As described there, and taking into account the comment by Gunnar Hjalmarsson, adding the following line to ~/.profile brought back the “Emoji Choice” input:

    export GTK_IM_MODULE=ibus
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  3. This may be because GNOME has put IBus in the off state, sort of, since you don't have any input sources which require IBus.

    $ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-im-module
'gtk-im-context-simple'

    A workaround to make Ctrl+Shift+E work is to:

    • install some IBus input method, for instance:

      sudo apt install ibus-libpinyin

    • re-login

    • Open Settings -> Region & Language and add "Intelligent Pinyin" to your list of input sources (even if you have no intention to input Chinese)

    Then you'll see that the gtk-im-module dconf value has changed:

    $ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-im-module
'ibus'

    and that Ctrl+Shift+E works as expected.

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  4. While Yann's solution work at runtime, whenever your gnome session is restared, it is reset to whether you need ibus or not based on your input sources. See source.

    To override this value for good, you can set this:

    gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides "{'Gtk/IMModule': <'ibus'>}"

    This will override whatever value is set for org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-im-module. Source

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