diff --git a/studio/backend/run.py b/studio/backend/run.py
index 5388d3148b..2d86f70578 100644
--- a/studio/backend/run.py
+++ b/studio/backend/run.py
@@ -175,6 +175,14 @@ def run_server(
     """
     global _server, _shutdown_event
 
+    # On Windows the default console encoding (cp1252) cannot encode emoji.
+    # Reconfigure stdout to UTF-8 so startup messages do not crash the server.
+    if sys.platform == "win32" and hasattr(sys.stdout, "reconfigure"):
+        try:
+            sys.stdout.reconfigure(encoding = "utf-8", errors = "replace")
+        except Exception:
+            pass
+
     import nest_asyncio
 
     nest_asyncio.apply()
diff --git a/unsloth_cli/commands/studio.py b/unsloth_cli/commands/studio.py
index 8a2267a79e..c4008aa4a6 100644
--- a/unsloth_cli/commands/studio.py
+++ b/unsloth_cli/commands/studio.py
@@ -133,12 +133,10 @@ def studio_default(
         display_host = _resolve_external_ip() if host == "0.0.0.0" else host
         typer.echo(f"Starting Unsloth Studio on http://{display_host}:{port}")
 
-    run_server(
-        host = host,
-        port = port,
-        frontend_path = frontend,
-        silent = silent,
-    )
+    run_kwargs = dict(host = host, port = port, silent = silent)
+    if frontend is not None:
+        run_kwargs["frontend_path"] = frontend
+    run_server(**run_kwargs)
 
     from studio.backend.run import _shutdown_event
 
diff --git a/unsloth_cli/commands/ui.py b/unsloth_cli/commands/ui.py
index 4457465e96..8f76636990 100644
--- a/unsloth_cli/commands/ui.py
+++ b/unsloth_cli/commands/ui.py
@@ -80,18 +80,19 @@ def ui(
         display_host = _resolve_external_ip() if host == "0.0.0.0" else host
         typer.echo(f"Starting Unsloth Studio on http://{display_host}:{port}")
 
-    run_server(
-        host = host,
-        port = port,
-        frontend_path = frontend,
-        silent = silent,
-    )
+    run_kwargs = dict(host = host, port = port, silent = silent)
+    if frontend is not None:
+        run_kwargs["frontend_path"] = frontend
+    run_server(**run_kwargs)
 
     from studio.backend.run import _shutdown_event
 
     try:
         if _shutdown_event is not None:
-            _shutdown_event.wait()
+            # NOTE: Event.wait() without a timeout blocks at the C level
+            # on Linux, preventing Python from delivering SIGINT (Ctrl+C).
+            while not _shutdown_event.is_set():
+                _shutdown_event.wait(timeout = 1)
         else:
             while True:
                 time.sleep(1)