What's the point of the fn/globe key??

[davidg4781]

I'm trying to post some stuff on Slack and Facebook (Safari) and I'm adding emojis so it's not boring.

I press the fn/globe key, search for what I want, click it, and nothing comes up? I thought it was supposed to add it in when I'm typing. Am I doing this wrong or is this not fully functional?

 

[rm5]

This is a bit of a stretch, but it could be a problem with the site... I can add emojis just fine here on the MacRumors Forums.

You might want to check System Preferences > Keyboard - maybe select another option and then reselect the "Display Emoji and Symbols" option.

 

[casperes1996]

I'm trying to post some stuff on Slack and Facebook (Safari) and I'm adding emojis so it's not boring.

I press the fn/globe key, search for what I want, click it, and nothing comes up? I thought it was supposed to add it in when I'm typing. Am I doing this wrong or is this not fully functional?

I don't know what you mean. When you hit the fn key you get a field you can search in and click something? The button is, from my perspective at least, only used to trigger the alternate behaviour of the F keys. Like when I set them to correspond to different text styles in Pages and switch between them with F1-5.
For emoji and special characters I use the character picker, which I invoke with ctrl+cmd+space. It looks like this:

This may be the same thing you invoke with the globe key? The globe key can also trigger input language changes, but auto detect works well on that anyway.

The character picker has always worked perfectly fine for me - only some input fields don't support unicode, but most will work just fine

 

[davidg4781]

It's not working for me on this site, even after trying that. Doesn't even work in Messages. Sometimes it does work, though.

I am on the latest PB of Ventura. I didn't mention that since it's been happening since I received this MBP. I'll submit a bug report.

 

[davidg4781]

I don't know what you mean. When you hit the fn key you get a field you can search in and click something? The button is, from my perspective at least, only used to trigger the alternate behaviour of the F keys. Like when I set them to correspond to different text styles in Pages and switch between them with F1-5.
For emoji and special characters I use the character picker, which I invoke with ctrl+cmd+space. It looks like this:
This may be the same thing you invoke with the globe key? The globe key can also trigger input language changes, but auto detect works well on that anyway.

The character picker has always worked perfectly fine for me - only some input fields don't support unicode, but most will work just fine

I tried the ctrl+cmd+space and I get the same pop-up as the globe key. When I select an emoji, the box goes away but nothing is added to the text field.

I just tried it by dragging and dropping (that didn't work), highlighting and then clicking. Some worked, some didn't. But I think it's more it worked for a while then stopped. I tried the cool face before, then melting, then cool. Cool worked the first time, melting and cool the second time did not work.

 

[casperes1996]

Right, as per rm5 I now realise it's a setting to make the globe key do that I have just always had off, haha. I like the ctrl+cmd+space invocation style. In any case, it should work just fine. Is the text field active when you invoke the character picker? Are you doing it through Safari on macOS Monterey? Let's see if we can find a consistent way of replicating your problem. What's the exact setup and I'll see if I can reproduce it.

 

[davidg4781]

Right, as per rm5 I now realise it's a setting to make the globe key do that I have just always had off, haha. I like the ctrl+cmd+space invocation style. In any case, it should work just fine. Is the text field active when you invoke the character picker? Are you doing it through Safari on macOS Monterey? Let's see if we can find a consistent way of replicating your problem. What's the exact setup and I'll see if I can reproduce it.

I think my last Mac didn't have emojis, so I just went with the globe key.

I'm using this on the reply box on Safari, in full screen. I just hit the globe, tapped an emoji, and nothing was keyed into the text box. 🤦🏻‍♂️🫠😎

I just tried doing a long press 🤔 and that seems to work. It's not a force press, that works too but isn't needed.

I would think I can just do a regular tap to make this happen. I'm currently on macOS Ventura 13.0 Beta (22A5321d) but I've had this issue since Monterey. I never really cared about it before since I hadn't been using my Mac much but I've been doing a lot more work today.

 

[casperes1996]

I think my last Mac didn't have emojis, so I just went with the globe key.

I'm using this on the reply box on Safari, in full screen. I just hit the globe, tapped an emoji, and nothing was keyed into the text box. 🤦🏻‍♂️🫠😎

I just tried doing a long press 🤔 and that seems to work. It's not a force press, that works too but isn't needed.

I would think I can just do a regular tap to make this happen. I'm currently on macOS Ventura 13.0 Beta (22A5321d) but I've had this issue since Monterey. I never really cared about it before since I hadn't been using my Mac much but I've been doing a lot more work today.

All Macs have always had the character picker with emojis in it. That is, the specific set of emoji available has of course been dependant on the current unicode spec as of time of software release, but it's always been an option with the character picker, just without a dedicated key to open the character picker, requiring either using the ctrl+cmd+space shortcut or using a menu bar button for invocation or other means.

Regardless, I cannot replicate then. A regular click on any character in the character picker works just fine for adding any character to any standard text field that accepts unicode characters. ASCII encoded text fields of course won't work, but all others will. ∀.  > 🪟 ∧ 🤖

 

[davidg4781]

All Macs have always had the character picker with emojis in it. That is, the specific set of emoji available has of course been dependant on the current unicode spec as of time of software release, but it's always been an option with the character picker, just without a dedicated key to open the character picker, requiring either using the ctrl+cmd+space shortcut or using a menu bar button for invocation or other means.

Regardless, I cannot replicate then. A regular click on any character in the character picker works just fine for adding any character to any standard text field that accepts unicode characters. ASCII encoded text fields of course won't work, but all others will. ∀.  > 🪟 ∧ 🤖

I had an older Mac mini. Maybe I just didn't know how to call up the character picker.

I'll submit a bug report. Maybe it's specific to certain models or just mine.

 

[hg.wells]

So I just tried in Pages and getting a similar behavior, a quick click on the trackpad doesn't always seem to select the character in the picker, but it closes the picker as if it was selected. Long pressing, you see the character highlighted in blue before it get's entered.

Turning off "Force Click and Haptic Feedback" in the trackpad settings seems to stop the issue occurring. Or alternatively long pressing until the character appears.

I'm using Monterey on a M1 MacBook Air, so its not Ventura specific.

 

[ndouglas]

Sounds like that could be due to being on the beta version of Ventura.

Different situation kind of, but I noticed on iPad OS using the Magic Keyboard that Control + Space is a really handy way for me to bring up the emoji choices. I get used to it and then get disappointed often when my muscle memory tries the same on my Macbook and that doesn’t work. I don’t know why.

Does your fn key on your Macbook also have the globe icon? Rereading your post, it’s not super clear to me which device, which keyboard, and OS you’re using. Having had a few Macbook laptops I’ve never noticed there was a globe key at all.
For my Magic Keyboard for ipad I just recently realized I can program the “globe” key to be Escape, which is great for me since Apple in their wisdom decided to omit that key for this keyboard. 😵‍💫 Now to just train myself to remember it’s there at bottom left instead of top left…

 

[davidg4781]

Sounds like that could be due to being on the beta version of Ventura.

Different situation kind of, but I noticed on iPad OS using the Magic Keyboard that Control + Space is a really handy way for me to bring up the emoji choices. I get used to it and then get disappointed often when my muscle memory tries the same on my Macbook and that doesn’t work. I don’t know why.

Does your fn key on your Macbook also have the globe icon? Rereading your post, it’s not super clear to me which device, which keyboard, and OS you’re using. Having had a few Macbook laptops I’ve never noticed there was a globe key at all.
For my Magic Keyboard for ipad I just recently realized I can program the “globe” key to be Escape, which is great for me since Apple in their wisdom decided to omit that key for this keyboard. 😵‍💫 Now to just train myself to remember it’s there at bottom left instead of top left…

I was thinking it might be because I'm on the beta but it's been doing this since Monterey. I'm using a 2020 M1 MBP, 13". The bottom left corner button has a globe and fn.

Annoying enough, right in the middle of typing this reply it hit submit.

 

[ndouglas]

Yeah since my last post I noticed the combo Fn/globe key on my wife’s Macbook. That‘s a bummer that it seems you can’t get the desired result from having programmed that key for emoji use.

I would strongly second casperes1996’s —-^ advice several posts above, and start using Cmd + Control + Space. I didn’t know about that on Macs until reading his post. For me at least, everything using a keyboard vs other ways is sooo much easier since it requires no visual work on my part. Similar to using Cmd + Space as a search function. Everyone is different of course so you might not agree or find it easy, which is fine. But based on your OP it would seem that using this method would directly suit your stated needs, of frequently wanting to input emoji among your text.

Good luck!

 

[BanditoB]

I've been having this problem too, but figured out what is going on. If you use tap-to-click on the trackpad (by just tapping on the trackpad and not causing it to click), the emoji will not be selected and inserted into your text. The emoji keyboard will simply close. If you press-to-click (press the trackpad hard enough to cause it to click) the character will highlight and then the emoji keyboard closes and the character is inserted into the text.

I'll be filing a bug report with Apple to let them know about this.

 

[chengengaun]

I’m not sure if this is due to a change of default behavior for the Fn/Globe key, but in my case I use it to switch between keyboard layouts in different languages and toggle the alternate function keys. If there is no alternate keyboard layout and the Fn key behavior changed, then I suppose it may appear as if nothing had happened when one presses the Fn key.

 

[alexonline]

The effin' FN globe key was always touchy on my M1 MBA, sometimes you had to long press to get the emoji picker, sometimes it didn't seem to come up at all. Using macOS 12.5 on an M2 MBA, it seems to work every time with a single press, but yeah, it wasn't consistent, which is, or at least was, very annoying.

 

[T Coma]

Lol, I read that title as extra aggressive.

I need to lighten up on the caffeine.

 

[mollyc]

I never realized what that key was supposed to do, but you can specify preferences in the Keyboard section of System Preferences. I've always used the cmd-col-spc combo to get to the emojis but just switched the function of the globe key to do emojis.

 

[Telemakhos]

If you use multiple keyboards for different languages, the "globe" key switches between keyboards instead of bringing up an emoji picker, ὥστε δύνασθαι καὶ Ἑλληνικῶς γράφειν, for example. I think that's why its symbol is a globe and not a funny face. For those of us who switch between languages frequently, a dedicated key for this instead of an abstruse combination is a very welcome addition to the keyboard.

 

[chrono1081]

I'm trying to post some stuff on Slack and Facebook (Safari) and I'm adding emojis so it's not boring.

I press the fn/globe key, search for what I want, click it, and nothing comes up? I thought it was supposed to add it in when I'm typing. Am I doing this wrong or is this not fully functional?

Sounds like whatever you're on may be bugged. Works great for me. 😄 (<- Done with globe key). Also make sure you're double clicking it.

 

[BotchQue]

On my setup, when I click on emojis I get:
When I double-click on emojis I get: ™ ℉ €

Give it a try. 2021 M1 MBP, current OS.

 

[adrianlondon]

It's never worked consistently for me, whether using the Fn key or the old ctrl-cmd-space (or whatever it is - I may have changed it) combo.

As an example, each time I try to add an emoji in the stock Calendar app, it usually doesn't enter anything.

Clicking/pressing the trackpad on the emoji rather than just tapping on it (I have tap-to-click enabled) always works though, so I just do that now.

 

[BotchQue]

Heh, beat me by a minute!

 

[davidg4781]

I've been having this problem too, but figured out what is going on. If you use tap-to-click on the trackpad (by just tapping on the trackpad and not causing it to click), the emoji will not be selected and inserted into your text. The emoji keyboard will simply close. If you press-to-click (press the trackpad hard enough to cause it to click) the character will highlight and then the emoji keyboard closes and the character is inserted into the text.

I'll be filing a bug report with Apple to let them know about this.

This has to be the issue! I'll file a bug report too.

Thanks for figuring this out.

 

[scutarius]

I've been having this problem too, but figured out what is going on. If you use tap-to-click on the trackpad (by just tapping on the trackpad and not causing it to click), the emoji will not be selected and inserted into your text. The emoji keyboard will simply close. If you press-to-click (press the trackpad hard enough to cause it to click) the character will highlight and then the emoji keyboard closes and the character is inserted into the text.

I'll be filing a bug report with Apple to let them know about this.

BanditoB

Would mind telling me how I can submit a bug report to Apple?