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.
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.
