Emoji Favorites disappear on reboot

If a simple reboot of your Mac doesn’t fix things, see if the problem still happens in safe mode.  Safe mode will often correct weird software behavior by forcing the OS to clear caches, do disk repair and other self-maintenance and housekeeping and temporarily disables third-party mods.

How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support 

Does the same thing happen while in Safe mode?

What happens if you rebuild a short list of fav emojis while operating in safe mode and then reboot?

You can exit safe mode by restarting your Mac normally, then reevaluate the problem.

Same here on macOS Tahoe 26.1 (25B78).

Repro: Open Character Viewer (expanded) → Add to Favourites one or more items → close the window → reopen. The Favourites section either vanishes or reappears empty; items I just added show “Add to Favourites” again instead of “Remove from Favourites.”

Tried: reboot; Safe Mode; new test user; clearing ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.CharacterPicker.plist and com.apple.CharacterPicker.RemoteGenerationViewService.plist; flushing cfprefsd. The plist does get updated while adding items, but the UI does not reflect it on reopen.

This started right after updating from 26.0.1 (no issue there). Apple’s help says Favourites should appear automatically in the sidebar when the viewer is expanded, which isn’t happening here. 

If anyone from Apple is triaging: happy to attach logs. For other users, a temporary workaround is Text Replacements or Unicode Hex Input until this is fixed.

This affects Favourites, not the “Frequently Used” recents. Steps: open Character Viewer (expanded) → Add to Favourites → close → reopen → Favourites vanishes and items show Add to Favourites again. Repro in Safe Mode + brand‑new user. Plist writes occur, but the UI drops them on reopen.

Interesting

On 3 different M-Class machines that have each been updated to Tahoe 26.1

All my Frequently Used all remain intact both before the update and after the update and even after restarting each machine several times

This appears to be a Localized and Unique this specific you your computer

Start now and open an Apple Support Ticket as they are Apple Employees who deal will these types of issues . 

 Product Feedback - and make it known to Apple regarding this ongoing issue

Stand corrected and thank you that 👍

Yup. " Favourites " I just added and then rebooted to Test

Favourites category Disappeared 😞

.Start now and open an Apple Support Ticket as they are Apple Employees who deal will these types of issues . 

 Product Feedback - and make it known to Apple regarding this ongoing issue

There are some who have put forth the idea at " Favourites " is equal to " Frequently Used "

Though, the fact that Favourites is made available in Character Viewer (expanded) tends to contradict, this unless this is truly an oversight by Apple

You may consider using the Product Feed Back to inform Apple of this issue

Same issue here. After Update to 26.1 Favorite Emoji lists are lost as soon as I close the Character Viewer window. Reboot and also booting in Safe Boot as described didn't solve the issue. I use emojis in my business calendar 24/7. Any other idea how to fix this?

The very same for me! Recently upgraded to Tahoe, and have since done the first software update for Tahoe. It's such a small thing - but wastes so much time trying to find all the punctuation/characters from other languages etc. etc. I'm less fussed by the smiley faces. "Favourites" not showing. I saw "customise list" - it's not an option in there. Add some favourites work. But then forgets them as soon as you shut the Character Viewer window. ☹️

Same here. Happened after Tahoe upgrade. Favorites are not the same as Frequently Used. Very annoying.

I wouldn't be shocked if Favorites are fixed in an upcoming point release.

Exactly same behaviour here on a Macbook Pro 14'' (2021), on upgrade from Tahoe 26.0.1 to 26.1.