Mac Keyboard Viewer

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

Mac Keyboard Viewer

In macOS, you can type special characters such as { é ƒ © ≠ ≥ ° }, by holding down the ⌥ option key. To see what characters are available, you can pull the Keyboard Viewer.

macOS 10.15.5 keyboard viewer 2020-07
MacOS Keyboard Viewer. macOS 10.15.5, 2020-07-25.

Hold ⌥ option down to type Unicode symbols.

Those colored orange are prefix keys, allowing you to type accented characters such as é ü ô.

You can make it insert emoji. 〔see Mac: Create Custom Keyboard Layout〕

How to Turn on Keyboard Viewer

mac keyboard preference 2017 09 33869
Mac keyboard preference panel. 2017-09-22. Checkbox the “Show Input menu in menu bar”

To start Keyboard Viewer:

  1. Open System Preferences
  2. Click keyboard icon
  3. Select “Input Sources” tab
  4. Click at the botton “Show input menu in menu bar”.
  5. Then, on the input menu at the top right of the menu bar, there's a menu [Show Keyboard Viewer] menu. This will show the Keyboard Viewer.
mac keyboard menu bar 2017 09 06497
Mac keyboard menu bar

Mac Keyboard Guide