How To Type Special Characters On Windows

Female Hands Typing.

Near characters you lot can type don't appear on your keyboard, whether you're using a concrete keyboard or a touch one. Hither's how you can type them on your computer or mobile device.

You could e'er perform a search online to find the symbol and copy-paste it into the programme you're using, besides. This is inefficient, simply works for chop-chop inserting the occasional obscure symbol

Windows

You can speedily insert special characters on Windows using Alt primal codes. These require a split up numerical keypard on the right side of your keyboard, so they won't work on most laptops. They'll only work on desktop PCs if y'all have that number pad to the right of your Enter key.

To use Alt primal codes, ensure that "Num Lock" is on — you may demand to tap the Num Lock primal to turn information technology on. Next, press the Alt primal and agree information technology down. Tap the appropriate numbers using the number pad at the right side of your keyboard and then release the Alt cardinal.

For example, let'due south say you desire to blazon the £ symbol for the British Pound. Information technology'southward numerical shortcut is 0163. With Num Lock enabled, yous'd hold downwards the Alt central, tap 0, tap 1, tap half-dozen, and tap iii — all on the numpad — and then release the Alt primal.

The Graphic symbol Map tool can help hither. Open it by tapping the Windows key, typing "Character Map" to search for it, and pressing Enter. For each special character, yous'll meet its Alt primal code printed at the bottom-right corner of the window. If you don't have a number pad, you can also head to this window to view a list of characters and copy-paste them into other applications. You can also detect lists of special characters and their associated codes online.

macOS

Mac OS X has its own Character Viewer, which is easier to access. In nigh any awarding, you lot can click Edit > Special Characters to open it.

Locate a symbol in the window and double-click it to enter it into the text field in the current application. If you use specific special characters frequently, you lot tin add them to your Favorites list so they can be easily accessed here. The listing is more than organized than it is on Windows.

Y'all can also blazon a variety of absolute letters and other special characters with Pick central shortcuts. For example, let's say you desire to type the word "touché." You could blazon "impact," printing Option+e at the same fourth dimension, and then tap the e key. This would instruct your Mac to use an acute accent over the alphabetic character east.

There are also Option+Shift keyboard shortcuts, and ones that don't use accented letters. For example, typing Option+iv gets you a cent symbol (¢) instead of a dollar sign. Washington State University has a good list of Option and Option+Shift shortcuts for typing special characters on a Mac.

If you lot only want to type a alphabetic character with an accent, there's a much faster manner on the latest versions of macOS. Just press and agree the appropriate letter key on your keyboard. For example, if y'all desire to type an "é" character, yous'd press and hold the "e" central.

A popup menu will appear. Press the number central corresponding to the accented letter of the alphabet yous want to blazon, or click it in the menu.

iPhone and iPad

RELATED: 12 Tricks for Typing Faster on Your iPhone or iPad's Keyboard

You lot can type many additional characters on an iPhone or iPad's bear upon keyboard by long-pressing the advisable key. For example, to type the word "touché," you'd blazon "touch on," long press the e fundamental, and cull the é grapheme.

This also works for a variety of symbols. For example, to blazon some other currency symbol, you lot'd long-press the $ symbol on the keyboard and choose your desired symbol.

If you frequently demand to type symbols that don't appear on the standard keyboard, you can head to Settings>General>Keyboards>Add together New Keyboard to add a keyboard from some other language that contains those characters. And, now that iOS offers support for third-political party keyboards, you could install a keyboard that offers support for a wider variety of Unicode symbols and use it.

Android

RELATED: Blazon Faster: 6 Tips and Tricks for Mastering Android's Keyboard

Android's keyboard works similarly. Long-press keys on the keyboard to access related characters and symbols. For example, long-press the e to find the accented due east characters. Long-printing other symbols — like the currency symbol — to admission additional related symbols.

This is how the default "Google Keyboard" app for Android works, anyway. Other keyboards should work similarly. Because Android offers support for more keyboards, you could install other keyboards from Google Play that are better suited to typing a wider multifariousness of Unicode symbols.

Other platforms with impact keyboards should piece of work similarly. Long-pressing keys will become you boosted absolute characters and symbols, while other special characters will have to come up from dedicated keyboards — or copy-pasting.

There'due south no single standard method for typing these Unicode characters on Linux. It depends on the applications and the graphical toolkit they use.