You can do fun things with your Mac, such as typing accents, emojis, and symbols. macOS includes features that make it easy to find and type special characters and currency symbols. Let’s look at how to do this in macOS Sequoia.
You can use the Character Viewer to insert smileys, dingbats, and other symbols as you type. Click the place in your document or message where you want the character to appear. Press Control–Command–Space bar. The Character Viewer pop-up window appears:
Use the search field at the top of the window, or click to expand the window and reveal more characters.
When you find the character you want, click it to insert it into your text. Characters and symbols you use often appear in the Frequently Used list in this window. In the Messages app, you can also see the Character Viewer popup when you click the grinning face icon. With macOS Sonoma, emoji you send in Messages appear at the same size as the text they’re part of. If you just send a few emoji without any other text, the emoji appear three times larger.
To type an accented or alternate version of a character, choose a character on your keyboard, and press and hold it. This will display the accent window. If a menu isn’t show, there’s no accent marks available for this character.
Now you can choose a character in the menu. You can also press the number key shown for the character, or use the arrow keys to move to the character, then press the Space bar. You should note that accent marks aren’t available in all apps.
You can also use “dead” keys. A dead key is a special kind of a modifier key used to attach a specific diacritic to a base letter. The dead key doesn’t generate a complete character by itself but modifies the character generated by the key struck immediately after. To summon dead keys from the grave:
In a Mac app, Mac, press the dead key for the mark you want to add to a letter. Then press the letter. You can use the Keyboard Viewer to see the dead keys on a keyboard layout—they’re outlined in orange (you may need to press a modifier key first). For example, on the ABC keyboard layout, you can press the Option key to see the dead keys.
Dead Keys
