Windows 10 emoji search broken by security update.
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way to begin with: Security patching is critical to protecting your Windows computer and the data it uses. I refer to it as the apocryphal pachyderm because it often feels like Microsoft is doing its best to convince us otherwise through the sheer number of issues that its security patches cause. Want recent examples? I hope you are sitting down: Windows 11 update causes firewall error, Windows 10 update causes startup loop of death, scan for Windows updates stops working, Windows security update causes mass confusion. The latest Windows security update issue is no laughing matter, or crying, winking or grimacing for that matter. Here’s what you need to know about the Patch Tuesday fix that appears to have broken emoji search for Windows 10 users.
Microsoft Security Update Breaks Windows 10 Emoji Search
As is often the case, the latest Windows security patch problem was first reported by a user on Reddit. Specifically, a user called Joé McKen, who posted to the Windows 10 subreddit on July 10 stating that: “After installing the July 2025 cumulative update (KB5062554), the emoji picker still mostly works – you can call it up with (Win + .) and clicking an emoji pastes it correctly – but the emoji search function is completely bricked.” This was soon added to by a myriad of other Windows 10 users complaining of the same issue, and I have since confirmed it to be the case on my test machine.
Now, fair enough, you may be thinking, “What’s the big deal with a search for smiley faces not working properly?” and you have a point, albeit simultaneously missing a much bigger one. While not being able to search for an emoji isn’t the most significant issue I’ve ever encountered, it’s part of a downward spiral of security updates causing problems. A spiral that suggests something isn’t right in the process of ensuring that said fixes are bug-free before releasing them to the masses. And in the case of Windows 10, we are talking about masses in the order of at least 400 million users. And that, dear reader, is a huge problem.
If the average user is dissuaded from applying security updates because they are concerned about what might break next, then it opens the door to hackers and cybercriminals. More accurately, it opens the window; the attack window. This is the time that a threat actor has to act between a vulnerability being disclosed and it being fixed on people’s machines. Unpatched vulnerabilities are a prime cause of initial access when it comes to ransomware and assorted other cyberattacks. The longer you give threat actors to attack, the more you are at risk. Anything that damages the trust between the vendor, Microsoft, and the user is as much a threat as the hackers themselves, in my never humble opinion. So, while losing access to emoji searching for a bit while waiting for Microsoft to work out what went wrong and correct it isn’t the biggest deal, the bigger picture is.
I have approached Microsoft for a statement regarding the Patch Tuesday security update breaking Windows 10 emoji search.