diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 6fbc58b44f..2da1593369 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](http://semver.org/).
 
 - `Pilot.click`/`Pilot.hover` can't use `Screen` as a selector https://github.com/Textualize/textual/issues/3395
 - App exception when a `Tree` is initialized/mounted with `disabled=True` https://github.com/Textualize/textual/issues/3407
+- Fixed application freeze when pasting an emoji into an application on Windows https://github.com/Textualize/textual/issues/3178
 
 ### Added
 
diff --git a/src/textual/drivers/win32.py b/src/textual/drivers/win32.py
index 214fb28dc5..5751af2caa 100644
--- a/src/textual/drivers/win32.py
+++ b/src/textual/drivers/win32.py
@@ -278,7 +278,12 @@ def run(self) -> None:
 
                 if keys:
                     # Process keys
-                    for event in parser.feed("".join(keys)):
+                    #
+                    # https://github.com/Textualize/textual/issues/3178 has
+                    # the context for the encode/decode here.
+                    for event in parser.feed(
+                        "".join(keys).encode("utf-16", "surrogatepass").decode("utf-16")
+                    ):
                         self.process_event(event)
                 if new_size is not None:
                     # Process changed size