How to Type Special Characters (Windows, Mac, Mobile & Copy-Paste)

There are three main ways to get special characters into your text: typing them directly from the keyboard, opening your operating system's character picker, and copying them from a collection site. Once you know when each one shines, you can pick the fastest route for the situation.

Windows: Alt codes and the emoji picker

The classic Windows trick is Alt codes: hold Alt and type a number on the numeric keypad, then release. For example, Alt + 3 gives ♥ and Alt + 9733 gives ★. It works anywhere, but you have to memorize the numbers and you need a numpad.

The modern way is the built-in picker: press Win + . (period) and a panel opens with emoji, kaomoji, and a Symbols tab full of characters like ★ ☆ ○ ● « » § — searchable and clickable. For the full catalog, the old Character Map app (charmap) still exists too.

The catch: these built-in tools cover common symbols well, but the trendy Unicode decorations you see on social media — things like ꒰ ꒱ ⋆｡˚ — are hard or impossible to find in them.

Mac: the Character Viewer

On a Mac, press Ctrl + Cmd + Space to open the Character Viewer. You can search by name ("star", "heart", "arrow"), browse by category, and double-click to insert. It covers far more of Unicode than the Windows picker, but searching by name is slow when you don't know what a symbol is called — which is most of the time with decorative characters.

Mobile: symbol keyboards and their limits

On iPhone, tap 123 then #+= to reach the symbol keyboard; on Android, the !#1 (or ?123) key opens a symbols page. But these hold mostly ASCII symbols like ! @ #, so for the pretty stuff, copying is still the answer.

The fastest way: copy and paste

For decorative characters like hearts, stars, and arrows, the quickest method is simply tapping to copy from the Symbols collection. Everything is organized by category — hearts, stars & flowers, arrows, brackets — so you can jump straight to what you need, and tapping the heart button saves a symbol to Favorites for instant reuse next time.

If you want to decorate a whole nickname, it's easier to type your name into the Nickname tool than to combine symbols one by one — it generates several combinations at once.

When a character won't type or shows as a box

If you paste a special character and see □ instead, that device's fonts don't support the character. It happens on older devices and in some apps, so when it matters (account names, announcements), stick to common symbols to be safe. Just remember: even if a character is in the Unicode standard, not every device ships a font that can draw it.