4 Ways To Type Special Characters On A Mac

You can type special characters on your Mac using one of four different techniques. For accent marks and character variations you can hold down keys on the keyboard or use Option and Shift to access some keys. You can also bring up the Emoji & Symbols chooser for thousands of special characters. Watch for more options and tips.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you four ways to type special characters on your Mac. 
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So sometimes you need to type characters that you can't find on your keyboard. Sometimes these are simple variations of the characters like adding an accent mark to a letter. Other times these are special symbols or even an emoji. There are many different ways to access these special characters. First let's look at doing simple accent marks and character variations. The simplest way to type these is simply hold down the key that's closest to the what   you want to type. For instance if you want to type an accent mark over the letter n, just hold down the n key and you will be presented with variations. So I'm going to show you examples here using TextEdit. But these work in Pages, Mail, and just about any app where you can type text. 
So I'm going to start typing and when I get to the character that has the accent mark I'm going to hold it down rather than just quickly pressing it and releasing it. You see above the character I'm given some choices. These are variations or the same character but with accent marks. Now I can use my mouse to simply select the character or I can press the number on the keyboard that corresponds to the variation I want. So in this case I'll type the number 1 and then I get the variation. Here's another example. I'll press and hold c and there I'll go with variation 1. Here's another example. I'll press and hold e and in this case I'll go with variation number 2. This method is not only great because it's so easy but it's also easy to remember. You don't have to remember how to access these special characters or look them up or what they're called or anything. Just press and hold the key. This only works for letters that have variations. So, for instance, if I hold the letter g down I don't get anything. But if I hold something like the letter u I'll get variations for that. i variations for that. z variations for that. 
Now you can also type characters with accent marks and other symbols using modifier keys on the keyboard. The modifier keys are Command, Option, Control, and Shift. But mostly Option and Shift are used to type modifications. So, for instance, if I wanted to type a yen symbol I could do Option Y. If I wanted to type degrees I would do Option K. The keyboard is filled with these. For instance Option X, Option H, Option B. They're all over the place. Shift, of course, mostly gives you upper case letters and also the symbols that you see on top of the numbers on your keyboard. But you can combine Option and Shift to create other things. For instance, Option Shift and Y will get me that and Option Shift and K will get me the Apple symbol. 
So how do you know which keys match to which special symbols. Well, it's easy to find out. As a matter of fact you can get a map in two different places. So first let's go to System Preferences and then Keyboard. Then we're going to go to Input Sources. Here you've got your keyboard on the left. If you have various keyboard layouts you'll see them all here. So the left is the one that you're using and you'll see a keyboard layout here. Now hold the Option key down and you'll see it change to show you what characters holding Option and pressing that key will generate. So if I see there's a copyright symbol and I think that might be useful I'll just release the Option key and see that's the G key. I could flip back and forth by holding the Option key down. I could also hold the Shift key down or both Option and Shift. 
Now another way to see this is to click here, Show Input Menu in Menu Bar. Then you've got this menu up here. So now we can leave System Preferences and I go here and I can bring up Show Keyboard Viewer. It brings up this nicer version of the keyboard. Just like with System Preferences if I hold the Option key down it will show me the different characters that I'll get when I use Option with that key. The same thing for Shift and Option Shift together. When you hold Option down it not only shows you the Option key equivalents but it shows you what you get if you hold Shift if look very carefully at each key. So this is a handy little menu here that you can keep up if you need to sight these characters. You can easily close this window. You can bring it up again very easily. It even has all these options here. This is part of the Accessibility features so a lot of these things apply to that. But you have the ability to shrink this down. You can go to a light appearance. You can make it semi-transparent so you can see behind it. 
Now another thing you'll see here is when I hold the Option key down notice some of the keys have an orange outline. These are called Dead Keys. That's right. They are called Dead Keys. The reason for that is they go back to the typewriter days where there were these special keys on the typewriter keyboard called Dead Keys. You press them and they don't seem to do anything. They seem to be dead. But the next key that you type would then have a variation of that key rather than the regular one. So, for instance, notice here I've got one that's over the e  key. Option e is a dead key for this type of accent mark. So if I type Option e and then a letter after it it will put that accent mark above it. Let's try that out. I'll go here and I'll use Option e. Notice I get that accent mark but it's got a yellow background. That's just telling me, okay you've typed a dead key, the next key you're going to press will be modified by this. So if I type an i you could see that accent mark appears over the i. If I do the same thing Option e and then an a the accent mark goes over the a. Now this only works if the accent mark fits with the character. So if I do Option e and then type say a h I'd simply get that character all by itself and the h. It only works as a dead key if the next key you type matches. So it has a variation that includes that accent mark. So you can see the Dead Keys here, there are five of them. You can release the Option key to see which one it is. So, for the n I can hold down Option n and then type n and I get that. I can do Option n and then o and that same Dead Key will work for the o but not for very many other characters. 
Now the last way to type special characters gives you access to thousands of different special characters including emoji. It's easy to access. There's a built-in keyboard shortcut for it. It's Control Command and Space. That brings up the Emoji and Special Character Viewer. It's a control that you can scroll through and it includes every emoji that's available, also special symbols, and all sorts of odd and unusual characters that come with your Mac. To use it all you need to do is click on the character and it inserts it right where you were when you used Command Control Space. So it's easy to type any character. Now you can scroll through here and also use the categories at the bottom to jump to different categories. At the top is Frequently Used which is this symbol here. So as you use different symbols they'll be more likely to appear in Frequently Used. The ones that you use all the time should be readily available to you at the top. But also if you scroll down you'll find a Search field here and you can search for symbols. So, for instance, if you want to find the pizza symbol no need to go looking for it. You could just search for pizza and it comes up. Search for anything and it will give you all the different symbols that kind of match that. 
Now keep in mind there's a limited number of key words per symbol. So sometimes when you search for a symbol in one way it won't show up but it will show up if you search another way. Say, for instance, I search for happy I get these. But if I search for smile I'll get slightly different results. So sometimes if you don't find what you want try searching with another word. Now note on newer Macs you've got a special key for this. You don't need to use Control Command Space although it works. You can use the fn key which has a little globe symbol on it and that will bring up this same little window here and allow you to type all these characters.
You can also keep your fingers completely on the keyboard when using this. You can do Control Command Space. Once you bring it up use the arrow keys to navigate around and select the one that you want. Then simply hit return and it will insert it there. You can also Drag and Drop. So Control Command Space and then you can just start typing to do the search. You don't have to bring the search field up. So I'll Search for fox there. I can drag this symbol and place it where I want. Now there's also a second mode to this. Bring it up and notice this little button here. Click that and it changes into the Character Viewer. Here you can go through different categories. In this case I have Emoji and then the different type of emoji. I can go to Arrows and see the different type of arrows. I could search here with the Search Field for something. You also can click here and customize the list. There are all sorts of other categories that you could turn On or Off. They'll appear here on the left. 
Then you can also add Favorites. So let's say that you do want to have mathematical symbols available to you all the time. You can select it here and say Add To Favorites. Select this one Add to Favorites and now those will be in Favorites. You could see Frequently Used just like we saw before and Favorites. Now I will click the button here to go back into this mode. Notice now I've got Favorites here. So I've got Frequently Used and Favorites. So I can set these characters to stay there no matter what I do. They won't change depending upon the frequency of how I use them.
So those are the four ways to type special characters on your Mac. But I have an extra tip for you. You can use Text Substitution to make some of these easier to type. For instance, say you use the pizza symbol a lot. You can go to System Preferences and then under Keyboard go to Text. Create a text replacement. So I'm going to hit the Plus button here and I'm going to add something I would never normally type. For instance, I could do a period which you would never start a word with and type pizza. I can have that replace with the pizza emoji. So I'm going to do Control Command Space will bring this up. I'll search for pizza. I'll double click it here. You could see it inserts the pizza emoji there. So now dot pizza will always get replaced with a slice of pizza. I can try it here. Dot pizza space so the next word and you can see the pizza emoji gets typed there. So you can add some of your favorites to text substitutions to make them even easier to access. 
I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 11 Responses to “4 Ways To Type Special Characters On A Mac”

Mark Flannery

3 years ago

This was informative. Now I can easily find the symbol for degrees °, which I use often

emmanuel scerri

Hello Gary, Thanks for a useful video. Keep up the good work! Emmanuel

Brad

When I hold down a key, it repeats.

Gary Rosenzweig

Brad: Perhaps in the past you used a Terminal command to disable this?

Debra

Gary when I go to System preferences and click on "keyboard", then "input sources", then click the box below for "show input menus in menue bar" nothing shows up. I have tried unchecking it and rechecking the box but nothing happens. I have a Mac book air with Big Sur 11.4. My husband has a Mac book pro with the same Big Sur 11.4 and it worked for him but not on my computer. My computer is about 2 years old.
Thanks,
Debi

Thanks Gary! If you have to execute a Terminal command to get keys to repeat, I can definitely see how I would have given up the special character feature for it. I've had this machine long enough to forget lots of things I've done to it. :)
Seems weird that repeating isn't the default action when holding down a key, though.

Brad: Do you use repeating keys? I can't imagine what for, in 2021. The only reason I can see to use them would be back in the typewriter days when you wanted to put a line of dashes as a horizontal rule. What do you use repeating keys for?

Still living in the typewriter days. Sometimes I go +++++++++ and sometimes I go ============== and sometimes i go ============> and sometimes I go <===========. I might use repeating keys to go AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARG!

Tom

So, how about a tip on how to keep all of your tips somewhere so I don't forget how to use a tip? I still think you should publish lists of tips that we can purchase and download and laminate for handy-dandy guides. Your tips are great. My memory...not so much.

Jasper

Is there a mouse-less way to dismiss the Special Character window? I saw you used Return, when you’d selected an Emoji; but what if you change your mind? I thought that either Escape, ⌘q, or ⌘⌥␣ would do it—seems not. And is there any other way to interface with System Preferences’ text replacement? The field is too small for my longer replacements. Maybe in Terminal somehow?

Jasper: The Esc key is the way to do it in normal mode. But perhaps you have switched from the "picker" to the window. Click the button at the top right corner to switch back to the picker. As for text replacements, just create the longer segment in TextEdit, copy, and paste into System Preferences.

Comments Closed.

4 Ways To Type Special Characters On A Mac

Comments: 11 Responses to “4 Ways To Type Special Characters On A Mac”

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