The umlaut fix for German keyboards here:

https://wpdiscuz.com/community/postid/28934/

...which just went in with the latest Emoticons add-on version 7.1.2, seems to have broken the colon-based entry of emoticons on US keyboards, such as:

:joy:

:flag-us:

etc.

Basically, typing colon plus alphanumerics does not pop up the small top-level window / tool tip needed to select an emoticon.

I tried deleting the cache, etc.  None of these helped.

My temporary fix has been to revert to the add-on version that I just purchased recently, which is 7.0.16 - this immediately fixed the problem, so I'm certain it's simply something with the colon.

I should also note that even in earlier versions of the add-on, US keyboards have always had a problem with regular single colons in text, reliably causing the emoticon selection pop-up to periodically show and not show and show again, until a second colon is typed.

I should note that I am using Linux with US English default and no alternate input keys, dead keys, etc., such as those like colon which are commonly used with International English, to generate umlauts.

Hoping this helps diagnose the problem.  Thanks in advance!