macOS

How to type any character you need

Discover how to enter characters like accents and symbols which aren’t on the keyboard
Difficulty The Mac’s keyboard has 26 letters, 10 numbers and a few
symbols, but there are actually hundreds of characters
Time needed including accents, umlauts and more. There are sometimes
eight or nine different variations of a single vowel for example.

10 There are hundreds of emoji characters and pictographs.

Currencies from around the world use special symbols, there
are maths symbols, Greek letters and many more. How do you
Download available enter all these characters? There are a couple of ways and one
is to use the keyboard viewer, which shows how modifier keys
like Option change the character typed. Another way is to use
the Character window to select characters and symbols.

Emojis and more! Keyboard

viewers
Every character option you need Add this menu bar item in
System Preferences and
click it to show the emoji
and keyboard viewers.
They help you to find
and enter any character
Keyboard display you need to enter into
This onscreen keyboard is your documents.
not static and it changes
depending on which keys
are pressed. These are the
symbols and characters that
are entered when the Option
key is held down for example.

Accents
To type accented characters
like this one, press and hold
the key until a widget appears
containing all the character
variations. Click the one you
want or press the number
below it.
Knowledge base
Compatibility
Although the Pages app was
used for our screenshots and
examples, these characters are
widely supported. They work in
Fun characters most apps plus you can copy
To enter fun characters like and paste them. For example,
these weather symbols, press enter an emoji, select it, press
Ctrl+Cmd+spacebar. This opens Cmd+C to copy it, open another
the Characters window and you can app and press Cmd+V to paste
browse the categories or use the it. Special characters are not
search function to find them. supported everywhere though.

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 Mac keyboards have changed a little over the years, so the characters you
get on an old Mac may not be the same as with a new one.

Step-by-step Learn to type awkward characters

1 Typing accents 2 Enter emojis 3 Enter special symbols

Suppose you are creating a document and Emojis are fun characters that you might want There is more than just emojis. Select ‘Letterlike
need an accented letter. Long press the letter to use in documents, emails or messages. Symbols’ on the left to see these characters.
until this widget appears. Press the number Press Ctrl+Cmd+spacebar to display this Browse the font variations in the bottom-right
under the character you want. window and double-click the emoji you want. corner and double-click one.

4 Search for symbols 5 Most used characters 6 More characters

There are hundreds of characters, so use the Select ‘Frequently Used Characters’ at the top Click the gear and select ‘Customize List’ to
search box in the top-right corner to find the of the sidebar to find something you have used see the full list of characters. You are currently
ones you want. For example, type ‘weather’ to before. Click the gear and select ‘Clear…’ to only seeing about half the collections. Tick the
see all the weather symbols. remove old ones from the list. boxes for more characters.

Show the keyboard

Holding down the Ctrl, Option, Shift and Command keys
on their own or in combinations affects the character that is
entered when a key is pressed. It is impossible to remember
them all, so there is a handy keyboard display that can be
shown. To resize this keyboard, position the mouse one pixel
above the top edge and click and drag it up or down. It can
be made as big or as small as you like.
1 Add menu tools 2 Check the keyboard
Add a menu bar icon by going to System When you need to enter a symbol or character
“Holding down the Ctrl, Option, Preferences and clicking the Keyboard icon. that is not on the keyboard, click the menu bar
Shift and Command keys Select the Keyboard tab and tick the box next to
‘Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar’.
icon and select ‘Show Keyboard Viewer’. Press
Shift, Ctrl, Option or Command and you are
affects a character entered” Click the icon to see them. shown what character each key produces.

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