Starting in OS X 10.10 Yosemite, the primary way to insert special characters of any sort is via the Emoji & Symbols Viewer. The problem with entering special characters from the keyboard is that, even with modifier keys, you can type only so many (there is another trick that we’ll share later, but it’s largely not helpful). How else would you figure out that Shift-Option-K gets you an ? Whenever you press a key, Keyboard Viewer gives you feedback, and if you press Shift, Option, or Shift-Option, it shows you what characters you can type. Click that menu and choose Show Keyboard Viewer. To access it, open System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard and select “Show Keyboard, Emoji & Symbols Viewers in menu bar.” That puts a new icon in your menu bar, either a flag representing your language or a square icon with a ⌘ symbol in it. How can you learn those shortcuts? With the Keyboard Viewer, a floating window that shows what pressing any combination of keys will insert. Using the Option key to type special characters remains the fastest and easiest way to enter commonly used ones. To re-enable that functionality, enter this command into Terminal and relaunch the app in question (revert the setting by changing false to true at the end):ĭefaults write NSGlobalDomain ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false Second, it prevents you from holding down a key and having it repeat. First, it can be flaky, and the recommended fix is to add a French or Spanish keyboard to System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources and then restart. The Character Picker suffers from two problems. Then click the accented character you want, or press its corresponding number. Just press and hold the key for the character until the Character Picker appears. It was hard to remember all the combinations, so starting in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Apple added an easier way, the Character Picker. The trick is to type the keyboard shortcut for the accent, such as Option-U for an umlaut, followed immediately by the character you want underneath. The Option key also helps you type accented characters like the umlauts necessary for a proper rendering of metal band Mötley Crüe’s name. ![]() You could even add Shift to get more characters, so Shift-Option– (minus) gives you an em-dash - character.
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