Disabling Tenor gifs in the Windows 11 emoji picker

04 Apr, 2026

I only just learned the shortcut for the emoji picker (Win+.), but I cannot stand the Tenor Gif keyboard thing that starts up by default when you use it.

Thankfully, it's moderately easy to disable, so here's a quick guide on how to do that:

1. Copy the path of the executable that runs the emoji picker/clipboard history (that one's Win+V, I use it constantly) thing.

• In my case it was C:\Windows\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows.Client.CBS_cw5n1h2txyewy\TextInputHost.exe, which I easily found by searching¹ for it with Everything (seriously, give Everything a try. It's just so fast compared to Windows search, I genuinely don't know why Microsoft hasn't, like, acquired or cloned it)

2. Block its internet access in the firewall.

• Open Windows Defender Firewall w/ the Start Menu
• Click "Outbound rules" in the left column
• Click "New rule" in the right column
• Proceed through the wizard: Program -> This Program Path -> (paste the path above, or if it's different for some reason on your machine, that path) -> Block the connection

Yippee 🦌🎉🦌🎉🦌

The emoji search is still just as bizarrely slow as it already was, but finally, I can say goodbye to the searching Google for the nodding emoji when I realize that Bluesky's built-in emoji picker doesn't have it yet, without needing to also see whatever gifs are most popular with Tenor Gif Keyboard users flash onscreen. 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

One potentially useless note:

IDK if Windows does that thing that Apple devices do where your clipboard is shared across all your devices, but if it does then I imagine that this method will break that, since this is also the app that's responsible for your clipboard history.