Apple keyboard symbols
(6 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5)
Loading ...The apple keyboard has some keys on it with only symbols, no words. Unfortunately to me these symbols are completely meaningless and so it has taken me ages to understand what those keys really do.
Even worse, Apple keyboards are completely inconsistent. For example on the MacBookPro keyboard it says ‘home’, ‘end’ and ‘page’, but on the normal standalone keyboard it used the symbols ↖, ↘, ⇞, ⇟ without any words. On some keyboards the word ‘option’ is used and in some case the symbol ⌥.
Unfortunately Apple uses these symbols in several places, such as the preferences pane where you control key combinations used for common tasks. This means that setting and using those combinations is trivial if the keyboard has them on the keys, but not otherwise. For example the following symbol ⌫, appears on the Finder menu as one of the keys used to ‘empty trash’, but it is nowhere to be found on any of my Apple keyboards. I’ll take a guess it is a backspace key.
It also means that you never learn what other functionality you might be affecting since you don’t know how those keys are used. This side-effect learning is normally quite important.
The final problem I had is that there is a key on the apple keyboard with just the symbol and the command symbol ⌘. Now I know what the command bit does, but do I have a clue what the Apple symbol is on there for? No chance.
Buried away on the Apple web site, I did manage to find a symbols document which explains most of the symbols, but not all.
The other useful thing that I discovered when trying to work all this out is what Unicode characters can be used to represent these symbols. They may not be the exact ones that Apple use but they seem close enough. So, to finish off, here is a helpful reference that combines the Apple document above with the Unicode code points.
| Character | Unicode code point (hex) | Usage |
|---|---|---|
| ⌘ | U+2318 | Command |
| ⇧ | U+21E7 | Shift |
| ⌥ | U+2325 | Option |
| ⌅ | U+2305 | Enter |
| ↩ | U+21A9 | Return |
| ⌃ | U+2303 | Control |
| ⇞ | U+21DE | Page Up |
| ⇟ | U+21DF | Page Down |
| ↖ | U+2196 | Home |
| ↘ | U+2198 | End |
| ⎋ | U+238B | Escape |
| ⌫ | U+232B | Delete (Backspace) |
| ⌦ | U+2326 | Forward Delete |
| ⇪ | U+21EA | Caps Lock |
| ⏏ | U+23CF | Eject Media |
| ⌧ | U+2327 | No idea. |
| U+F8FF (private use) | No idea. | |
| ⎇ | U+2387 | No idea. |
I can’t find the Unicode characters for the Apple tab key symbol with the sloping line, but then that only appears on one of my keyboards, on the others the line is vertical. Sigh.
Update: I just came across this earlier article, from an unusual source that sheds some light on the keys I don’t understand. But not much.
October 30th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
The one with the box crossed out (⌧) is the clear button. In Calculator.app it clears the input, i.e. it is like pressing ‘C’. Not sure what else it is used for though….
October 31st, 2006 at 9:50 am
The Clear key has the same effect as the Delete command in the Edit menu: It removes the selection without putting it on the Clipboard. Not all keyboards have a Clear key, so don’t require its use in your application.that was from the Apple Developer site.
November 14th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
[…] Following up on Jay’s posting on the unexplained symbols on Mac keyboards, I was also initially rather confused when I first started using a Mac 18 months ago. What was even stranger was that books such as David Pogue’s Mac OS X - The Missing Manual didn’t explain either. Surely one of the first things you need to tell a newcomer to Mac OS X is that when someone talks about the ‘Command’ button they mean that one with the cloverleaf pattern on it? […]
January 19th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Where is the ‘Print Screen’ button or shortcut.
March 12th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
I believe the apple key is a holdover from previous versions of the mac. They switched to the command symbol but left the apple on the key for longtime apple users.
June 1st, 2007 at 9:57 pm
[…] techblog Computer Keybord Command […]
January 24th, 2008 at 11:22 am
You can get the (Apple symbol) by pressing Command-Shift-k. Another useful one for AU/US keyboard layouts is Option-3 which will give you the £ (pound) symbol! I have found that very useful now that I have moved to the UK!
January 24th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Oh I’m so sorry, I meant Option-Shift-k !!!
February 4th, 2008 at 7:48 am
In the keyboard icon on the menubar, you can chose “keyboard viewer” (if it’s not there you can enable this in /preferences/international/keyboard)
hold “shift” and it changes, useful for ‘ñ’ ‘é’ ‘è’ ‘û’, even “tree points”… it will be great to know how to change this defaults; I need a ‘¿’ for spanish… althoug it is in my favorites in the “special characters” (under edition in the finder and mac native apps)…
February 5th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
If your keyboard and OS are in english, and you need to use characters from another language. You can use the ALT (option) key.
for example,
á press alt+e and then a
é press alt+e and then e
ñ press alt+n and then n
¿ press alt+?
¡ press alt+!
ü press alt+u and then u again
there are more combinations to get different symbols using alt and any key
April 21st, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Also, in the UK, “option” is called “alt”.
June 5th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
the last symbol means option/alt
September 30th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Alt+e, Alt+u and Alt+i can be used with any vowel letter (a,e,i,o,u) to produce ä, ë, ü, ï, ö, or â, ê, î, û, ô or á, é, í, ó, ú.
Option is called Alt in South Africa also.
I have a problem in Tiger with a Mac Mini. I got a new aluminium Apple keyboard today, but the numpad won’t work. When I press 4, 2, 6, 8 and 5 it moves the cursor left, down, right, up and clicks respectively.
Does anyone know what is going on here?
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Thanks for the decoding buddy… ;)
Apple keyboards look great but are such a pain to get used to for a standard Windows user…
November 24th, 2008 at 11:03 am
no words seriously sucks. make it easy for the ppl…