MacOS – Keyboard Viewer crashes when I use keyboard command

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When I try to invoke the Emoji and Keyboard Viewer via the Keyboard shortcut (CRTL + CMD + SPACEBAR), the menu bar icon crashes on me and the viewer does not invoke.

I tried removing the preference file com.apple.HIToolbox.plist as suggested in this Apple Forum answer. After restarting the keyboard viewer icon appears in my menu bar (American Flag). I can select items in the menu. As soon as I invoke the keyboard shortcut however it disappears:

Broken Keyboard Viewer

Do I have a corrupt preferences file somewhere?

I am running macOS Sierra V 10.12.3.

Best Answer

After further investigation I found my startup drive was corrupt and I needed to run Disk Utility. Steps I took:

  1. Delete com.apple.HIToolbox.plist from Library/Preferences/ folder.
  2. Restart machine.
  3. Hold down CTRL + R to run Disk Utility from Recovery HD.
  4. Selected Disk Utility from Recovery HD menu.
  5. Ran First Aid on my machine.
  6. Once finished, I restarted.

After restart the issue went away.

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