I use ibus-uniemoji, and I settled with this years ago after trying to find a similar replacement coming from Windows as you.
After install just set up a keyboard shortcut to quickly change between input languages, and you can just type your emojis effortlessly. As it’s an input method it doesn’t matter what DE you use. Demo gif from Github:
This happens to me with the native Arch build as well. File -> Syncronize reloads the view and everything behaves normally after that.