

It means not all keyboard shortcuts will work in all applications, especially third-party applications. For example, UK and US keyboards have slightly different layouts despite supporting the same language, and other foreign language keyboards have myriad differences.

In a nutshell, keyboard layouts can vary depending on your location. Why do some macOS keyboards have different layouts? There’s also a “Frequently Used” section on the Character Viewer. To remove a character from your Favorites folder, select the folder itself from the Character Viewer, click your desired symbol, and select “Remove From Favorites.” Select the symbol as before, then click the “Add to Favorites” button on the right side. To open this, head to the Input menu in the menu bar and click “Show Keyboard Viewer.” For our purposes, we can use this to find special characters on the keyboard without trial and error. The Mac includes a number of accessibility features, one of which is the Keyboard Viewer.
What symbols mean for keyboard shortcuts on mac how to#
How to Use the Keyboard Viewer to Help You Find Special Characters Type the “¥” symbol, using the Option + Y keyboard shortcut on all keyboards.Īgain, it’s worth noting that this will depend on your exact keyboard layout and language, but for standard QWERTY keyboards using a variation of English, this is likely correct. ¥: Japanese Yen and Chinese Yuan/Renminbi.If you want to type the cent (¢) symbol, use Alt/ Option + 4 You can type a dollar sign using the Shift + 4 keyboard shortcut. £: British Pound Sterling: US keyboards can use Alt/ Option + 3, while UK keyboards will use Shift + 3.For UK keyboards, use the Alt/ Option + 2 shortcut. €: Euro: for US keyboards, you can type a Euro (€) sign on Mac using Alt/ Option + Shift + 2.Let’s run through how to type various common symbols on both US and UK keyboards:
