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Why Use Emoji and Special Symbols?

Emoji and special symbols add personality, clarity, and creativity to your writing – whether you’re sending an email, writing a document, or creating social media posts.

How to Use Emoji and Special Symbols on a Mac

Using emoji and special symbols on a Mac is straightforward once you know where to look. The main feature you’ll use is the Character Viewer, which lets you insert emojis, accented characters, mathematical symbols, currency signs, and much more into any text field.

Ways to Open the Character Viewer on a Mac

• Keyboard Shortcut (Most Common):
  • Press Control + Command + Spacebar to instantly open the Character Viewer in any text field.
• From the Menu Bar:
  • Put Character Viewer on the menu bar.
    1. Click the Apple Menu () in the top-left corner.
    2. Select System Settings (or System Preferences on older Macs).
    3. Scroll to the bottom and select Keyboard from the left panel.
    4. Click the Edit… button next to Input Sources, and enable “Show Input menu in menu bar”. 
    5. Click Done to close the All Input sources window.
    6. Close the Settings App.
  • Use Character Viewer on the menu bar.
    • Click the Input menu icon (flag or character icon) in the menu bar, then choose Show Emoji & Symbols.
• Via the application Edit Menu:
  • In most apps, go to the Edit menu → Emoji & Symbols.
• Globe (Fn) Key Shortcut:
  • On newer Mac keyboards, press the Globe/Fn key to toggle the emoji picker on and off.
• Touch Bar (MacBook Pro with Touch Bar)
  • Tap the emoji icon on the Touch Bar to bring up quick emoji suggestions.

Searching & Organizing Symbols

• Enter a word or phrase in search field of the Character Viewer to quickly find the emoji or symbol that best matches your expression.
• You can find your most frequently used emoji and symbols in the Favorites folder on the left panel of the Character Viewer.
• An option to searching by keyword is to look in the Character Viewer categories folders.