How do I disable the emoji button on the virtual keyboard in Windows 8.1?

Solution 1:

I have not found a way to remove the emoji button completely but I have found a way to disable it.

Please note: This disables emojis on the touchscreen keyboard system wide. Not just for a particular program.

For Windows 8.1

The touchscreen keyboard uses a resource dll file called TipRes.dll which is located in:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ink\

You will need to edit this dll and remove references to emoji's. With all references removed the emoji button on the keyboard simply does nothing at all.

Before editing the file you will likely have to change the permissions on the file to allow you to make changes. Take ownership and give yourself full control.

To edit the dll file I used a program called Resource Hacker You can find the program here: http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/

Open the dll file in Resource Hacker and navigate to the html section. Here you'll find a long list of keyboard layouts. Scroll down until you see the grouping of layouts that start with "EMOJI". Right click on each and choose "Delete Resource"

Overwrite the original file with your changes and that's it! The emoji button will no longer do anything when clicked.

If you get a warning that the file is in use preventing you from saving the changes be sure that the touchscreen keyboard is not currently running. You can stop the TabletInputService service to kill any instance of the touchscreen keyboard or kill any tabtip.exe processes in Task Manager.