Need Help Selecting Emoji Categories

By Kelly Sapergia, 3 July, 2026

Forum

iOS and iPadOS

I'm experiencing a rather frustrating problem with the Emoji keyboard on iOS 26.5.2. When I bring up the keyboard, it seems to default to emojis for certain avatars such as "Ghost face". (At least that's what it shows when I move past the Emoji Search box.)
At the bottom of the screen are buttons for various faces, but that's not what I want. Rather, I want to select a different category of emojis, such as Food and Drink, and can find that by getting to the bottom of the screen with a four-finger single tap, and swiping to the left until I get to that category. I find that I have to do this fairly quickly, however, as VO, for whatever reason, usually wants to jump to a different part of the screen, such as the Emoji Search box. Anyway, when I get to the category I want, I'll double-tap on it, but don't believe it's been selected as VO moves me somewhere else, and the stupid avatar emojis are still there! (I'm using this in Touch Typing mode at the moment.)
Does anyone have any suggestions on getting around this annoying behavior?

Options

Comments

Have this issue also, from beginning of 26.

What I do is on the keyboard, go to delete and slide to select recent for me so I can pick what I use. in your case select faces or whatever you look. After that see if that helps. Good luck.

Some possible recommendations

Disclaimer: these options may or may not work for you, but at least give them a shot. 🙂

Try adjusting the following settings:

• go to Settings, General, Keyboard. Disable Slide-to-Type and Stickers.
• go to Settings, Accessibility, VoiceOver, Rotor, Rotor Items. make sure Slide-to-Type is enabled, then do your rotor gesture to that option and turn it off.

Hopefully with Slide-to-Type disabled both in Keyboard and VoiceOver settings, as well as Stickers being disabled, you will have an easier time choosing categories on the emoji keyboard.

HTH.

What I Do

I, too, have the issue you described; it started for me in iOS 26and is about as frustrating as it gets. The easiest ways I have found to work around the issue are:

Dictate the emoji ("Smiling face emoji..."), if you are able to do so. This usually achieves the desired result, though sometimes it will actually insert the words into the text field thus necessitating a redo. Check your text before sending.
Use the Emoji Search functionality and search for the emoji you want ("smiling"), then insert that into your text. I have not done this in a while so can't provide exact steps, but it did work for me last time I tried it.

Think I Got Things Working Better

Thanks for all the comments. Slide to Type was already off for both the Keyboard settings and VO, but that's good to check. I eventually got things working better on the Emoji keyboard by scrolling back through the list of categories/faces until I got to a button called Memojis, which was selected. Once I de-selected it, the categories and regular emoji worked correctly. I don't know if this is permanent, though, but at least I can now get to the content I want with that keyboard.

Forgot about the MeMojis

I completely forgot about the Memojis. I am on an older device, so I don't even have those. 😅
Glad you got that figured out though. 👌

Please Keep us Updated

Hi Kelly - glad you got it working better. If you don't mind, please can you keep us updated on whether that solution works long-term for you? Thanks!