How to Type Special Characters on Mac

Every language has special characters that are unique to it. It’s easier than you might think to type any of those special characters on a Mac. These are also called “diacritical marks,” and they can be anything from the German umlaut (Müller) to “Smith née Jones” to show that a person’s name used to be something else. The word “aos,” which means “years,” has its own special characters.

Whether you’re new to Mac or have been using it for years, things like shortcuts, special Mac symbols, and accented characters can make a web search go out of control. If you just switched from Windows, you should know that you can’t really type special symbols with alt codes on a Mac. Instead, you can type in all of the most common Unicode characters from the keyboard. Apple could do a much better job of showing off this feature, which is a shame.

On Windows, for example, you have to type Alt 0169 to get a copyright symbol (), but on a Mac, all you have to do is press Option + G.  On a Mac, the degree symbol (o) is Option + 0 and the symbol for a registered trademark (TM) is Option + 2. In reality, there are many more like this, and below we’ll look at different ways to type the copyright symbol on a Mac or any other special characters that Macs can handle, where to find Apple keyboard symbols, and if there’s an emoji keyboard on a Mac. We mentioned below are the ways to Type Special Characters on Mac.

Ways to Type Special Characters on Mac

Use Your Normal Keyboard

1. Make sure the cursor is in the text entry field.
2. Press and hold the keyboard key you want to use as the variation key.
3. When the context menu appears, press the number corresponding to the symbol you wish to enter.

Copy and Paste the Character From Google

You can use Google to copy and paste the character you want. To use this method, you must first describe the character you want to find in a search engine. Cut and paste the character from the search result into your document. For example, to find the German letter ü, you can search for “u with two dots.”

Use the Accessibility Keyboard

1. Launch your Mac’s System Settings and go to Accessibility > Keyboard.
2. Turn on the Accessibility Keyboard option.
3. With the Accessibility Keyboard open, click Option to reveal some hidden special characters. (You can also hold down the Option button on the keyboard).
4. If you click and hold on the letter of the alphabet for which you want to find special characters on the accessibility keyboard, you can access other special characters associated with that particular alphabet.
5. When you do so, a small menu in the lower right-hand corner will display variations of that alphabet.

Character Viewer

1. Click “Edit” on the menu bar and select “Emoji and Symbols” from the drop-down.
2. Click the double arrow icon in the lower right corner of the open window to skip the emoji and switch to the symbol.
3. Pressing the globe (fn) key on the Mac keyboard also provides a shortcut to open the Character Viewer.

Get a Physical Keyboard for That Language

All the other solutions are based on software, but you can fix this problem by changing the hardware. The official Magic Keyboard for Mac from Apple comes in more than one language. Most of the keys on foreign language keyboards are used for English and foreign language characters. But there are keys for some foreign characters. Keep in mind that you’ll need to change your system’s default language to get the most out of it. So, here’s what to do when you get the keyboard:

1. Launch the Mac’s System Settings and select “Keyboard” from the left pane.
2. Now scroll down to the “Text Input” section on the right and click “Edit” next to “Input Source.
3. Next, click the plus (+) button, search for your desired language, and click “Add“.
4. Finally, click on the keyboard icon in the menu bar (next to the Wi-Fi and battery icons) and select the language you added to make it your default.

Type Without Boundaries on Your Mac

People who type a lot of foreign languages and special characters on their Macs will find the above tips helpful. So, you now know how to get the right characters for a foreign language assignment or translation work.

You no longer have to use plain English characters that make your documents hard for people whose first language isn’t English to read and understand.

Final Words

So here we conclude our article on how to Type Special Characters on Mac. We can help you if you just switched from a computer to a Mac and found that the ” and @ keys aren’t where you thought they would be, or if you need to type some strange characters or accents on your Mac keyboard. The location of the characters may depend on where you are in the world. Each country has a different keyboard layout, and the people who use certain characters the most have them in a bigger font.

The Mac is great in terms of how it is made and how comfortable it is to use. But it doesn’t have any special characters. Well, it’s not just the Mac keyboard, it’s every keyboard. Depending on where it is, some have the $ sign and some have the € sign. But what if you want to type a square root sign as a character in your text? You won’t need to download any apps or add-ons, which is great. Your Mac will take care of you. If you know more about this, you can go to Apple’s official support website and ask for more help.