Regardless of whether you’re new to macOS or using a new keyboard, you may be struggling to find special characters and symbols. This guide shows how to use the Character Viewer and Keyboard Viewer to type characters, such as a Euro sign, on the Mac. This includes other currency signs, such as the Yen or cent, and special characters and symbols.
How to Change Your macOS Keyboard Layout
You can always switch to a different keyboard layout via your Mac’s System Preferences. For example, you could switch to the UK keyboard layout to access some special characters.
To change your layout, navigate to the System Preferences -> Keyboard screen.
Select the Input Sources tab, and Show Input menu in menu bar checkbox.
Select the + icon on the left side to browse all of the available keyboard layouts. From the pop-up dialog, select the desired keyboard layout, then click Add.
Repeat as many times as desired to add multiple keyboard layouts to your list.
You can switch between all of the available keyboard layouts in the menu bar drop-down, via the two-letter country identifier for your preferred language.
How to Type a Euro Sign and Other Currency Symbols on Mac
There are several currency characters that are supported by the macOS keyboard that aren’t displayed on the physical keys. You’ll often find that the pound sterling and dollar signs are available, but you’ll need to hunt for the rest.
If you see question mark boxes where a symbol should be, it’s because the font you’re using doesn’t support that particular symbol.
If you need to change your font to one that supports the symbols you need, try Font Book. You can free type the symbols, then scroll through fonts to find something suitable.
Let’s run through how to type various common symbols on both U.S. and UK keyboards:
- €: Euro: for U.S. keyboards, type a Euro (€) sign on Mac using Alt/Option + Shift + 2. For UK keyboards, use the Alt/Option + 2 shortcut. On European keyboards, the Euro symbol will be on the keyboard by default.
- £: British Pound Sterling: On a U.S. keyboard, use Alt/Option + 3, while on a UK keyboard, use Shift + 3. UK keyboards will have the pound sterling symbol on the keyboard by default.
- $ and ¢: Dollars and Cents. Type a dollar sign ($) using Shift + 4. If you want to type the cent (¢) symbol, use Alt/Option + 4.
- ¥: Japanese Yen and Chinese Yuan/Renminbi. Type the ¥ symbol using the Option + Y keyboard shortcut.
It’s worth noting that this will depend on your keyboard layout and language you’re using, but for standard QWERTY keyboards using a variation of English, this is likely what you will find.
Tip: learn special keyboard shortcuts for Pages.
How to Use the Keyboard Viewer to Help You Find Special Characters
The Mac includes a number of accessibility features, one of which is the Keyboard Viewer. For our purposes, we can use this to find special characters on the keyboard without trial and error.
Head to the Input menu in the menu bar, and click Show Keyboard Viewer.
This will bring up an overlay of your current keyboard.
Hold down a key, and the display will change to show you what other modifiers and keys are available.
The nice thing about the Keyboard Viewer is that you’ll also see the “dead keys,” those keys that can’t be used with that modifier.
How to Add More Special Characters Using the Character Viewer
If you need to use a currency symbol that isn’t supported by a keyboard shortcut, use the built-in Character Viewer. This lets you access a range of additional characters, including arrows, bullets, stars and “letter-like symbols,” such as Fahrenheit, Celsius, and the trademark sign.
To launch the Character Viewer, select Edit -> Emoji & Symbols from the menu bar of any app.
As an alternative, set up the Function key within the System Preferences -> Keyboard screen to open the Character Viewer. Both of these options will open a quick view overlay.
Click the Input icon in the top-right corner to open the full Character Viewer.
The Currency Symbols option will open the relevant symbols.
Click on the symbol you want to insert to see all of the available font variations. To insert the character into your document, double-click a variation.
How to Use Text Expansion to Type Special Characters on Mac
One of the underused features of macOS is the text expansion option. This is a way to type full sentences using shorthand letters and acronyms. It’s “txtspk” for your Mac. The functionality is also great for displaying symbols.
For example, open the System Preferences -> Keyboard panel, then select Text Input -> Text Replacements.
Click the + icon at the bottom of this screen, type your shorthand in the Replace field, and the desired symbol in the With field. The key is to find a shortcut phrase that you wouldn’t use anywhere else (to avoid accidentally triggering the shortcut).
So if, for example, you wanted to make a shortcut for the pound sterling button, you could make Replace something like GBP. The chances of you using GBP elsewhere in another context is very remote.
In the With section, add your currency symbol. You can either find it using one of the methods already outlined in this article, or Google the symbol and copy/paste it.
macOS will offer you the option of using the symbol whenever you type the trigger phrase.
Don’t worry the next time you need to type an unsupported symbol on your Mac. As we have shown, it’s not a big problem to easily find that symbol, though just a tiny bit of extra digging may be involved. You can also learn how to type special characters in Windows 10 and Linux.
Image credit: Unsplash. All screenshots by Mark O’Neill.
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