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

Solution 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. :)

Solution 2:

I found these earlier answers:

• “Why Does My Emoji Picker ibus Key Combo Fail to Respond in Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic”
• “What happened to Ibus Emoji Typing in Ubuntu 20.04?”

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

Solution 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.

Solution 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