What Do The Mac Keyboard Symbols Mean? How to Customize Shortcuts And Change Your Mac Keyboard Layout?
Macs are relatively easy to use and are quite intuitive. Still, as a new Mac user, looking at your Mac's keyboard, you're most likely confused about what most of the symbols mean. And you may wonder why some of them look the way they look.
How to type Bitcoin symbol on mac is a new currency. If you want to learn Thomas More some cryptocurrencies themselves, then you can check out our beginner courses on How to type Bitcoin symbol on mac and cryptocurrencies. Early-stage investors in Bitcoin and Ethereum made millions of dollars stylish pristine profits. If you see the following. Symbols composed of multiple Unicode characters are special in that they are treated as a single character on Mac, despite appearing as multiple symbols. For most of the characters, this grouping is controlled by the first character, which is a Unicode private use character that is invisible on Mac. The Alpha Symbol Shortcut for Mac is Ctrl + g, Ctrl + a. Windows has several shortcuts, some of which works only in Microsoft Word. However, there's a Windows shortcut for the Alpha Sign that works across all applications. It is the alt code shortcut which is Alt+224 (will be discussed in the next section). The method uses the Mac's built-in spelling-correction software. If you have a letter that needs a diacritical mark, hold the key down longer than usual and a pop-up menu will appear. Simply click on the correct symbol and it will insert itself in what you're typing. Macs have different shortcuts to Windows and the symbols are rarely shown on the keyboard. Use this guide to find hidden symbols on your Mac the easy way. For training call +44(0)1273 6222 72.
By living a fast-paced lifestyle, you want to get everything done as fast and as efficiently as you can. That's why knowing the meaning of each symbol is essential as they give you the option to execute a command by using shortcuts. Shortcuts are a specific combination of keys on your keyboard. But before you start using all the fantastic shortcuts that Apple has provided you with, let's get to know the symbols first. You might be overwhelmed by the number of new symbols you have to remember now. But actually, they are not that hard to understand, and by using them every day, you will have them memorized in no time. To make it easier for you to navigate, all Apple keyboards made after 2012 have a key label next to the symbol.
Apple has made many changes throughout the years to accommodate different languages and cultures. Keyboard symbols may look slightly different and be labeled differently depending on the layout, age, or region the Apple keyboard comes from. For example, the keyboard manufactured for the United Kingdom may differ from the keyboard manufactured for the United States. How to configure parallels desktop for mac. That's because different countries use different symbols. For instance, while the U.K. keyboard layout has symbols (§) and (±) under the escape key, the German keyboard layout has symbols (º) and (^). And some international keyboards can have alt written instead of the ⌘ symbol on the command key. So don't be confused if you're in a situation when you can't find a specific key on another keyboard.
Copy screen mac. The two most essential modifier keys are the Command (⌘) key and the Option (⌥) key.
You'll find the Command keys at the bottom of your keyboard, on both the left and right sides of the space bar. It's the main modifier key you hold down along another key to execute a shortcut. The main purpose of the key is to let you use your computer without a mouse. It can be labeled as 'command' or 'cmd' depending on the keyboard region. Before the symbol (⌘) was introduced, the command icon was the Apple logo. Steve Jobs decided that the Apple logo was overused as it was everywhere. Thus the new symbol was assigned to the command key. The pretzel-shaped design is a symbol used in Nordic countries to indicate a campground on a map.
The Option keys are located next to the Command keys. It's typically used for typing special and accented characters such as (©)=Option+G and (µ)=Option+M. The Option key can confuse users as different keyboards have different indications. Some regions have a symbol (⌥) next to the label, and others have Alt and Option written on them and don't have the symbol. If you have an older keyboard, it can only have the symbol on it without the label.
Bellow, you'll find all Mac keyboard symbols and their meanings.
Table of Contents:
The List of Mac's Keyboard Symbols
⌘ - command
⌥ - option
⌃ - control
⇧ - shift
⇪ - caps lock
◄ - left arrow
► - right arrow
▲ - up arrow
▼ - down arrow
⇥ - tab
⌫ - delete
↩︎ - return
␣ - space
⎋ - escape
The above list is the keys that are most commonly used and are essentially on all keyboards. The list below is an additional list of symbols mostly you see in menus.
⇤ - backtab
⌤ - enter
⌦ - forward delete
⇞ - page up
⇟ - page down
↖︎ - home
↘︎ - end
⌧ - clear
⏏ - eject
Function key symbols:
F1 - Screen brightness down
F2 - Screen brightness up
F3 - Launches mission control
F4 - Launches dashboard
F7 - Rewind
F8 - Play / Pause
F9 - Fast forward
F10 - Mute sound
F11 - Sound volume down
F12 - Sound volume up
§ Symbol Meaning
Many users have expressed the frustration behind this symbol as they're having a problem identifying it. It is not specific to Apple, and you should not worry too much about it if you're not using it frequently.
§ is a section mark. It's usually used to indicate a section of a book.
Rearrange Key Positions on Your Keyboard
If you want to rearrange the key positions on your keyboard, follow the steps below:
1. In the upper menu bar, click on the Apple logo.
2. Go to 'System Preferences'.
3. Find and open 'Keyboard' settings.
4. Go to the 'Input Sources' tab.
5. Click on the + icon at the bottom and select a language you want to add.
You can change keyboard languages any time by clicking on the country flag in the upper bar right corner.
Modifier Keys
If you just recently switched from a Windows computer to a Mac, you probably have difficulty adapting to the position of the command button. Fortunately, Mac lets you can change the position of all modifier keys.
1. In the upper menu bar, click on the Apple logo.
2. Go to 'System Preferences'.
3. Find and open 'Keyboard' settings.
4. In the 'Keyboard' tab, click on the 'Modifier Keys' button.
5. Switch modifiers places as you prefer.
6. Then click on 'OK'.
For example, you want the Command key to be the Control key on your keyboard. Then you need to click on the drop-down menu next to the Control key and select Command.
Customizing Shortcuts
Now that you know the meaning of your keyboard symbols and know how to change the keyboard layout, you can start using shortcuts. They are a great way to minimize your time executing a command.
You can use already existing shortcuts or customize them the way that's more convenient for you.
To change or add new shortcuts, follow the steps below:
1. In the upper menu bar, click on the Apple logo.
2. Go to 'System Preferences'.
3. Find and open 'Keyboard' settings.
4. Go to the 'Shortcuts' tab.
5. In the left sidebar, you can choose which menu shortcuts you can change. You can go through all of them one by one and change individual shortcuts.
6. When you have selected a menu, click on a specific shortcut.
7. When the shortcut is highlighted, click on the key combo.
8. When the key combo is selected, hold down the modifier and the new key. The new key combo should appear instead of the old one.
Suppose you see an exclamation point in a yellow triangle next to the key combo. Mac os 10 7 6. In that case, your change is conflicting with another shortcut that has the same key combination. It's best to use a sequence that's not already in use or change the conflicting shortcut.
Universal shortcuts that are already built-in into the system can't be changed. Still, some of them you can change per application.
1. In 'System Preferences', open 'Keyboard' settings.
2. Go to the 'Shortcuts' tab and select 'App Shortcuts'.
3. Click on the + icon at the bottom.
4. In the drop-down bar, choose an app for which you want to create a shortcut.
5. In the 'Menu Title' bar, write the exact command.
6. In the 'Keyboard Shortcut' bar, type the key combination you want to use for the shortcut.
7. Click on the 'Add' button.
Once you go to the app menu, you'll see the new shortcut.
Text Shortcuts
If you use a lot of word or sentence abbreviations, you should check the Text tab in your keyboard settings. This function will automatically change your abbreviations to full words or sentences.
Click on the + icon and in the 'Replace' tab write your abbreviations, and in the 'With' tab, write the full word or sentence.
In the same tab, you can also turn off autocorrect.
Video On How to Customize Shortcuts And Change Your Mac Keyboard Layout
You can type fractions in text and word processing documents in a number of ways. The simplest is to use a slash character between numbers. This also works in cases where you want your Mac to perform calculations, like in Spotlight. But you can also format the fractions nicely using baseline shifts, special fraction characters, and the math equation editors in Pages and Word.Check out 4 Ways To Type Fractions On a Mac at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.
Macbook Keyboard Symbols
Video Transcript: These are special characters that are part of like the universal character set that all computers have. So you can actually use the ¼ character, I can just click on that and this is a single character, and that should show up okay on just about any computer.Now what if you want to use a fraction that's not one of those few that have special characters. Well, you have some options. The main option, and what most people use, is just use the slash key on your keyboard. So, for instance, if I wanted to type three sevenths I would just type 3 slash 7. This is so universally used that it's okay pretty much in any circumstance to use it. Maybe with the exception of the nicest typeset things like posters or something like that. But typically you can see this everywhere. You can see this in textbooks. You can see this in examples online and everything.Now this is a very important method of doing it because it's a method that the computer understands when you're doing math calculations. So for instance I'll do Command Space to bring up Spotlight here. If I type 3/7 you can see it actually calculates the result. So in any math equation I want to definitely use this technique. So it's nice sometimes when the way that you put something to be in a nice word processing document and the way you type something into Spotlight or Calculator or some other type of app it's the same. The same characters that you type. So you can just use a slash for fractions.Now you can make things look a little bit better. For instance I can select that first character there and I can go and change it to Baseline to make it superscript and then maybe make this second character here, the second number, the Baseline subscript. That creates a nicer looking fraction. As a matter of fact you even have the option to use a different slash. So you may have noticed when I do Control Command Space and search for fractions that there's another slash there. You can see that slash is a little bit more of a diagonal line than the other one. So you can use that.There are other things that you could do. You can decide to shrink the size of these numbers a little bit. You can use the Baseline to, you know, raise and lower a little bit. Or even make the denominator default. There's lots of things that you can do. You can play around with it until you get something that looks like what you want to see. So you have that option as well.In Pages you have another option because in Pages you can do mathematical formulas using Insert, Equation. Now you think you would be able to type something like 3/7 and get a nice looking fraction. But in fact you don't. You just get 3/7. It looks like maybe it doesn't do anything special with fractions. But there's a special function there. If you do a back slash, not a regular slash but a back slash, and Frac, that's a special function, then you do curly brackets and the first number, the numerator, and then curly brackets with the second number, the denominator, you get a nice fraction. You can put any number you want in there. So thirteen seventy sevenths, for instance. Or seven hundred and seventy sevenths. You just do Insert and then you get your fraction. This is kind of like an little image here. So I can Copy that and I can say switch over to TextEdit here and Paste that in. It's going to want to make sure it's a format that can handle that. You can paste it into Mail. So you can do these cool fractions using the Insert, Equation function in Pages and then go ahead and Copy and Paste that elsewhere if you need it somewhere else.Oh, and a couple quick notes here. If you're using Microsoft Word you can also do Insert, Equation but you don't have to do any special functions there. You can just actually type 3/7 and hit Return and it will convert it to a cool little fraction there. In addition, whether you're using TextEdit, Pages, Word, whatever, if you want to type the divide symbol, like you actually want to do an equation and show divide, just hold Option and then the regular slash and then you get the division symbol.
The Option keys are located next to the Command keys. It's typically used for typing special and accented characters such as (©)=Option+G and (µ)=Option+M. The Option key can confuse users as different keyboards have different indications. Some regions have a symbol (⌥) next to the label, and others have Alt and Option written on them and don't have the symbol. If you have an older keyboard, it can only have the symbol on it without the label.
Bellow, you'll find all Mac keyboard symbols and their meanings.
Table of Contents:
The List of Mac's Keyboard Symbols
⌘ - command
⌥ - option
⌃ - control
⇧ - shift
⇪ - caps lock
◄ - left arrow
► - right arrow
▲ - up arrow
▼ - down arrow
⇥ - tab
⌫ - delete
↩︎ - return
␣ - space
⎋ - escape
The above list is the keys that are most commonly used and are essentially on all keyboards. The list below is an additional list of symbols mostly you see in menus.
⇤ - backtab
⌤ - enter
⌦ - forward delete
⇞ - page up
⇟ - page down
↖︎ - home
↘︎ - end
⌧ - clear
⏏ - eject
Function key symbols:
F1 - Screen brightness down
F2 - Screen brightness up
F3 - Launches mission control
F4 - Launches dashboard
F7 - Rewind
F8 - Play / Pause
F9 - Fast forward
F10 - Mute sound
F11 - Sound volume down
F12 - Sound volume up
§ Symbol Meaning
Many users have expressed the frustration behind this symbol as they're having a problem identifying it. It is not specific to Apple, and you should not worry too much about it if you're not using it frequently.
§ is a section mark. It's usually used to indicate a section of a book.
Rearrange Key Positions on Your Keyboard
If you want to rearrange the key positions on your keyboard, follow the steps below:
1. In the upper menu bar, click on the Apple logo.
2. Go to 'System Preferences'.
3. Find and open 'Keyboard' settings.
4. Go to the 'Input Sources' tab.
5. Click on the + icon at the bottom and select a language you want to add.
You can change keyboard languages any time by clicking on the country flag in the upper bar right corner.
Modifier Keys
If you just recently switched from a Windows computer to a Mac, you probably have difficulty adapting to the position of the command button. Fortunately, Mac lets you can change the position of all modifier keys.
1. In the upper menu bar, click on the Apple logo.
2. Go to 'System Preferences'.
3. Find and open 'Keyboard' settings.
4. In the 'Keyboard' tab, click on the 'Modifier Keys' button.
5. Switch modifiers places as you prefer.
6. Then click on 'OK'.
For example, you want the Command key to be the Control key on your keyboard. Then you need to click on the drop-down menu next to the Control key and select Command.
Customizing Shortcuts
Now that you know the meaning of your keyboard symbols and know how to change the keyboard layout, you can start using shortcuts. They are a great way to minimize your time executing a command.
You can use already existing shortcuts or customize them the way that's more convenient for you.
To change or add new shortcuts, follow the steps below:
1. In the upper menu bar, click on the Apple logo.
2. Go to 'System Preferences'.
3. Find and open 'Keyboard' settings.
4. Go to the 'Shortcuts' tab.
5. In the left sidebar, you can choose which menu shortcuts you can change. You can go through all of them one by one and change individual shortcuts.
6. When you have selected a menu, click on a specific shortcut.
7. When the shortcut is highlighted, click on the key combo.
8. When the key combo is selected, hold down the modifier and the new key. The new key combo should appear instead of the old one.
Suppose you see an exclamation point in a yellow triangle next to the key combo. Mac os 10 7 6. In that case, your change is conflicting with another shortcut that has the same key combination. It's best to use a sequence that's not already in use or change the conflicting shortcut.
Universal shortcuts that are already built-in into the system can't be changed. Still, some of them you can change per application.
1. In 'System Preferences', open 'Keyboard' settings.
2. Go to the 'Shortcuts' tab and select 'App Shortcuts'.
3. Click on the + icon at the bottom.
4. In the drop-down bar, choose an app for which you want to create a shortcut.
5. In the 'Menu Title' bar, write the exact command.
6. In the 'Keyboard Shortcut' bar, type the key combination you want to use for the shortcut.
7. Click on the 'Add' button.
Once you go to the app menu, you'll see the new shortcut.
Text Shortcuts
If you use a lot of word or sentence abbreviations, you should check the Text tab in your keyboard settings. This function will automatically change your abbreviations to full words or sentences.
Click on the + icon and in the 'Replace' tab write your abbreviations, and in the 'With' tab, write the full word or sentence.
In the same tab, you can also turn off autocorrect.
Video On How to Customize Shortcuts And Change Your Mac Keyboard Layout
You can type fractions in text and word processing documents in a number of ways. The simplest is to use a slash character between numbers. This also works in cases where you want your Mac to perform calculations, like in Spotlight. But you can also format the fractions nicely using baseline shifts, special fraction characters, and the math equation editors in Pages and Word.Check out 4 Ways To Type Fractions On a Mac at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.
Macbook Keyboard Symbols
Video Transcript: These are special characters that are part of like the universal character set that all computers have. So you can actually use the ¼ character, I can just click on that and this is a single character, and that should show up okay on just about any computer.Now what if you want to use a fraction that's not one of those few that have special characters. Well, you have some options. The main option, and what most people use, is just use the slash key on your keyboard. So, for instance, if I wanted to type three sevenths I would just type 3 slash 7. This is so universally used that it's okay pretty much in any circumstance to use it. Maybe with the exception of the nicest typeset things like posters or something like that. But typically you can see this everywhere. You can see this in textbooks. You can see this in examples online and everything.Now this is a very important method of doing it because it's a method that the computer understands when you're doing math calculations. So for instance I'll do Command Space to bring up Spotlight here. If I type 3/7 you can see it actually calculates the result. So in any math equation I want to definitely use this technique. So it's nice sometimes when the way that you put something to be in a nice word processing document and the way you type something into Spotlight or Calculator or some other type of app it's the same. The same characters that you type. So you can just use a slash for fractions.Now you can make things look a little bit better. For instance I can select that first character there and I can go and change it to Baseline to make it superscript and then maybe make this second character here, the second number, the Baseline subscript. That creates a nicer looking fraction. As a matter of fact you even have the option to use a different slash. So you may have noticed when I do Control Command Space and search for fractions that there's another slash there. You can see that slash is a little bit more of a diagonal line than the other one. So you can use that.There are other things that you could do. You can decide to shrink the size of these numbers a little bit. You can use the Baseline to, you know, raise and lower a little bit. Or even make the denominator default. There's lots of things that you can do. You can play around with it until you get something that looks like what you want to see. So you have that option as well.In Pages you have another option because in Pages you can do mathematical formulas using Insert, Equation. Now you think you would be able to type something like 3/7 and get a nice looking fraction. But in fact you don't. You just get 3/7. It looks like maybe it doesn't do anything special with fractions. But there's a special function there. If you do a back slash, not a regular slash but a back slash, and Frac, that's a special function, then you do curly brackets and the first number, the numerator, and then curly brackets with the second number, the denominator, you get a nice fraction. You can put any number you want in there. So thirteen seventy sevenths, for instance. Or seven hundred and seventy sevenths. You just do Insert and then you get your fraction. This is kind of like an little image here. So I can Copy that and I can say switch over to TextEdit here and Paste that in. It's going to want to make sure it's a format that can handle that. You can paste it into Mail. So you can do these cool fractions using the Insert, Equation function in Pages and then go ahead and Copy and Paste that elsewhere if you need it somewhere else.Oh, and a couple quick notes here. If you're using Microsoft Word you can also do Insert, Equation but you don't have to do any special functions there. You can just actually type 3/7 and hit Return and it will convert it to a cool little fraction there. In addition, whether you're using TextEdit, Pages, Word, whatever, if you want to type the divide symbol, like you actually want to do an equation and show divide, just hold Option and then the regular slash and then you get the division symbol.And Symbol On Mac
Mac Keyboard Symbols List
