How to type special characters on a Mac

The Option key shortcuts worth memorising

The Character Viewer, for everything else

Press Control, Command and Space together in any text field. The Character Viewer opens with a search box. Type a name, not a code: searching for arrow, heart or currency filters the whole Unicode catalogue by character name. Double-click a character to insert it, and drag your most-used ones into the Favorites list at the top.

Click the small icon in the top right of the panel to expand it into the full window. That view adds a sidebar with categories and, for the selected character, its code point and a list of related and variant forms, which is the fastest way to find the heavy variant of a check mark or the outlined version of a star.

Unicode Hex Input, for typing a code point directly

If you know the code point, macOS can type it directly. Open System Settings, then Keyboard, then Input Sources, and add Unicode Hex Input. Switch to that input source, hold Option, and type the four hexadecimal digits. Option followed by 2 1 9 2 gives a rightwards arrow.

One caveat that surprises people: while Unicode Hex Input is the active source, the normal Option key shortcuts in the table above stop working, because Option is now reserved for code point entry. Most people keep their usual layout and switch over only when they need it.

Where the Option shortcuts come from, and why they differ per layout

The Option combinations are not a Unicode feature. They are part of the keyboard layout macOS loads for your chosen input source, which means they change when the layout changes. The table above is for the standard US layout, which the British layout follows for most symbol positions.

On a layout with dead keys, such as US International or several European layouts, some of those combinations are reassigned to accent composition instead. Option and E, for example, arms an acute accent rather than producing a character of its own, and the character only appears once you press the letter it should sit on. If a shortcut in the table gives you nothing visible, that is almost always what happened: the keystroke armed a dead key and is waiting for the next one.

You can see the whole map rather than guess at it. Enable the Keyboard Viewer from the input menu, then hold Option. The on-screen keyboard redraws to show exactly what every key produces with Option held, and holding Option and Shift together shows that layer as well. It is the fastest way to learn the ten combinations you personally need.

Favorites, and why the Character Viewer is worth setting up once

The Character Viewer keeps a Favorites list at the top of its sidebar, and dragging a character into it takes a second. If you reach for the same six or seven symbols across a week, that list removes the search step entirely and turns the panel into something closer to a palette.

The expanded view also shows two things that are easy to miss. For a selected character it lists the code point, so you can confirm which of several lookalikes you are about to insert. And it shows related characters and font variants, which is the quickest route from a light check mark to the heavy one, or from a solid star to the outlined one, without knowing either code point.

One caveat worth knowing: the panel inserts into whatever field had focus, and some applications lose that focus when the panel opens. If a double-click seems to do nothing, click back into your text field once and try again.

Text replacement, for the characters you type every day

macOS has a system-wide text replacement list under Keyboard settings, and it is the closest thing the platform has to an alt code you invent yourself. Map a marker you would never type otherwise, such as two semicolons followed by deg, to the degree sign, and it fires in any application that uses the standard text system.

The list syncs across devices signed in to the same account, so a replacement added on a Mac also works on an iPhone and an iPad. For someone who types the same handful of symbols in email, notes and messages, that is a bigger practical win than memorising Option combinations, because it works the same everywhere rather than only where the layout cooperates.

The caveats are worth stating. Applications that draw their own text fields, including some editors and terminal emulators, bypass the system text engine and therefore ignore the list. And a marker that is too short will fire when you did not mean it, which is why doubling a punctuation mark at the start is the usual convention.

Press and hold, for accented letters

Holding a letter key on a Mac pops up a small accent menu for that letter. Holding E offers e-acute, e-grave, e-circumflex and so on; pick with the arrow keys or the number shown. This covers accented Latin letters only, not symbols, so it will not help you find an arrow or a currency sign.