
- HOW DO I CHOOSE DIFFERENT CHARACTERS ON MY APPLE KEYPAD HOW TO
- HOW DO I CHOOSE DIFFERENT CHARACTERS ON MY APPLE KEYPAD PRO
By default, the Character Viewer provides access to a library of special character, including Latin-based letters, Emojis, bullets, maths symbols and additional punctuation.

When the Character Viewer is shown, inserting a character is as easy as double-clicking it in the window. Now that the Keyboard & Character Viewer menu is visible on your menu bar, you can select it and click on either Show Character Viewer or Show Keyboard Viewer to view the relevant viewer. The Keyboard and Character Viewers are easily accessed from the menu bar when enabled. To do this, click on the Apple menu in the menu bar, then navigate to System Preferences > Language & Text > Input Sources and select the Keyboard & Character Viewer tickbox. The easiest way of accessing either of these two viewers is by enabling the Menu bar shortcut. Where a special character isn't available through the long-press method, described above, OS X provides the Keyboard and Character Viewers to allow you select and insert individual special characters. Long-pressing the E key provides access to a range of accented alternatives.įor example, to add an acute accent to the letter e (thus creating the é character), simply hold down the E key on your keyboard, followed by pressing the 2 key to insert the respective character instead.Īlternatively, you can click the character you want or cycle through the options with the arrow keys and use the Return key to select one. This feature, introduced in OS X Lion, streamlines the process of adding accents to characters in your document, without the need to manually insert them through a maze of menus and toolbars. A small menu will appear about the letter indicating which number key to press to get one of the listed special characters. You can enter a number of accents and language-based special characters by simply holding down the key relevant to the character that you wish to carry an accent. Alternatively, you might find yourself needing the use the symbol for the Japanese Yen but your British-localised keyboard doesn't accommodate that particular currency symbol. The time may come when you do need to quote a bit of French and let an E carry an acute accent, a notable absence on your keyboard. Your keyboard, after all, is tailored to the characters of your language and the symbols are those most commonly used in your geographic location.Ī MacBook comes equipped with keys for the most commonly used characters in your language.
HOW DO I CHOOSE DIFFERENT CHARACTERS ON MY APPLE KEYPAD HOW TO
In this tutorial, I will show you exactly how easy it is to access special characters in OS X.īefore I start looking at how to input and use special characters, you may be wondering why you'd ever need to use them.

OS X has, however, the power to input well in excess of the characters residing on those eighty, or so, individual keys through a handy system of virtual input and substitution. But I can't find a way to do that.Your Mac's keyboard likely comes equipped with keys for all your most commonly-typed characters, such as your local alphabet, numbers and a range of common punctuation and basic symbols.
HOW DO I CHOOSE DIFFERENT CHARACTERS ON MY APPLE KEYPAD PRO
> How do I type special characters and accents on the iPad Pro smart keyboard? For example, I'd like to write "Róisín Murphy" with the accents in the name as shown here. I've posted a gist of the option keys at Apple Smart Keyboard Special Characters and Accents Use the option ( ⌥) key on an Apple Smart Keyboard.
