[adamrezich]

the Win+. emoji/special characters board is substantially less usable. this has been my only, yet biggest gripe so far. it was nice to be able to hit Win+. then type "heart" and get, y'know, the heart emoji, to send my wife—no idea how the Windows 11 one shipped given how unusable it is.

[dspillett]

For specific emoji, and other characters/sequences, you use regularly you could use something like WinCompose (other compose key tools exist, this seemed to be the best of them at the time I was last looking) to setup shortcuts.

You don't get the search functionality though, so it is not useful for first time use of a character or discovering “new” ones.