The right way to Kind Particular Characters, Emojis, and Accents in Home windows

Home windows helps you to simply kind non-alphanumeric characters in a browser window or inside recordsdata and functions. These might be much less frequent symbols (like €, ó, á, ₩, ü, ฿), GIFs representing an expression or thought, and even emojis like this wide-eyed smiling face (❁´◡`❁). This tutorial demonstrates the right way to kind particular characters in Home windows.

Good to know: have to kind an em sprint? Find out how to take action on any platform.

1. Emoji Keyboard

Probably the most simple option to kind a particular character in Home windows is the built-in Emoji Keyboard, often known as Character Picker. It comprises a large number of emojis, overseas alphabets, symbols, and kaomojis (emojis made with Japanese characters), and is way quicker than googling a logo to repeat and paste.

Press Win + . or Win + ;. They each take you to the identical menu.

When you want one emoji particularly, use the search possibility.

When you want a kaomoji or image, change to their devoted tabs and browse.

Kaomojis in Windows character picker using shortcut Win + Period.

While you discover the image you need, click on to insert.

One of the best a part of this software is that you may insert GIFs too. Simply kind an expression or thought, and you will get loads of GIF decisions.

Windows character picker showing various GIFs.

Each class retains observe of your most-used characters. When you’ve got one that you simply insert continuously, verify the “Latest” tab to search out it.

Tip: try the right way to open Gadget Supervisor rapidly.

2. Character Map

The Character Map (or Charmap) has a little bit of an old-school aesthetic to it and doesn’t embody emojis/kaomojis/GIFs, nevertheless it has two issues going for it:

  • lets you change between a number of character units and languages
  • lets you choose a number of characters directly

You will have to seek for “Character Map” within the Home windows search bar to make use of Charmap to find new symbols and characters.

Character Map utility opened in Windows 11 with exclamation point selected.

Browse for the image you’re searching for.

Be aware: Charmap is not very searchable. It is inconvenient to scroll by means of each image listed below a selected font kind. Nonetheless, you do get an enormous variety of non-alphanumeric decisions.

Clicking on a symbol/character inside Character Map in Windows

Click on “Choose” or double-click so as to add the specified character to a listing of characters to repeat.

Characters to copy inside Charmap.

Each time you add one other character to the record, the entire record is shipped to your clipboard.

You too can verify the “Superior view” field to get filters and search choices.

Special characters copy-pasted into the clipboard by clicking "Select" in Charmap.

While you’ve chosen the whole lot, use Ctrl + V to insert the characters the place you need them.

All Charmap symbols are simply supported on Microsoft functions, resembling Phrase, Excel, and WordPad. Nonetheless, a few of them might not render appropriately on an internet browser, like Google Chrome.

CharMap symbols copy-pasted into a WordPad document.

FYI: try much more ideas for utilizing the Contact keyboard in Home windows 11 to its full potential.

3. Contact Keyboard

If that you must kind accented letters or a number of frequent symbols, your on-screen keyboard is an efficient option to entry them. You may search for accents in Charmap and Emoji Keyboard too, nevertheless it’s a lot quicker with the Contact keyboard.

There are a number of methods to launch the Contact keyboard, however the simplest way is simply so as to add it to your taskbar.

Proper-click in your taskbar, and choose “Present contact keyboard button.” If you don’t see this feature in Home windows 11, choose “Taskbar settings” as a substitute.

Right-clicking on Taskbar to select "Taskbar settings."

If “Contact keyboard” below “System tray icons” is about to “By no means,” change it to “All the time.”

Touch Keyboard should be kept on "Always" status via Windows Settings.

Click on the Contact keyboard icon in your system tray, and its default keyboard format will present. When you click on on any of those letters, it is going to routinely copy to the clipboard, and you may paste it elsewhere.

Touch keyboard view in default layout on a Windows screen.

To kind an accented letter, long-press the letter you need, then mouse over the right accent.

Choosing multiple accents by long-pressing an alphabet on the Touch keyboard in Windows.

To kind numerical symbols, use the &123 button on the underside left. If you wish to see extra symbols, press the left and proper slider buttons.

You too can long-press any numerical image to view extra choices. For instance, if you happen to long-press a quantity, it reveals the choices for subscripts and fractions. When you long-press the “$” image, it reveals extra forex symbols.

Various numerical symbols on the Touch Keyboard.

For emojis, click on the heart-like icon on the highest of the Contact keyboard, which can result in many emojis, kaomojis, and a search button for GIFs. These are the identical symbols as Character Picker.

Emoji button on the top of the Touch keyboard leading to many emojis, kaomojis, and GIFs

4. Alt Key Codes

Energy customers with numeric keypads and reminiscence might desire utilizing the Alt + [number code] trick. This solely works when you’ve got a keyboard with a separate quantity pad and will not work with numbers alongside the highest row.

In case your laptop computer has a Num Lock key, press it as soon as to activate the quantity pad part in your keyboard.

Press and maintain Alt, kind within the code in your quantity pad that corresponds to the image you need, then launch Alt.

For instance, Alt + 1 is a smiley face (☺), Alt + 228 is a sigma (Σ), and Alt + 0128 is the euro image (€).

Win Characters Unicode Alt options.

There are lots of codes, so that you’ll need to look them up not less than a number of instances earlier than you memorize those you utilize most continuously. Alt-Codes has a complete library, however we desire AltCodeUnicode, because it has a textual content description of every image, making it rather more searchable.

When you’ve got a quantity pad and have a tendency to typically kind the identical symbols, memorizing the Alt codes is the easiest way to go. But when it’s important to cease and search for codes on a regular basis, it is best to make use of one other methodology.

Tip: trying to enhance your typing pace or accuracy? Try the very best typing video games and apps that will help you enhance.

5. Set up a Bodily Keyboard in One other Language

When you’re a bilingual/multilingual speaker, you do not have to cope with the default keyboard format. It is easy to put in further bodily keyboards in different languages to kind their continuously used accent marks. They are often linked to Home windows by means of USB or Bluetooth.

As an example, if you happen to’re fluent in French, a French language keyboard makes it simpler to kind letters with French accent marks, resembling ç, é, â, ô, ò, and ù.

When you’ve got a USB keyboard, join it to your laptop computer’s USB port. For these utilizing a Bluetooth keyboard, comply with this information that reveals the right way to pair a Bluetooth machine in Home windows.

Click on the language bar on the system tray, which ought to say “English US” or one thing comparable. This opens all of your present keyboard layouts.

Choose “Extra keyboard settings.”

More keyboard settings selected in System Tray language icon.

Click on a three-dot icon subsequent to your language pack, and choose “Language choices.”

Selecting language options in Windows language and region.

Choose “Add a keyboard” subsequent to “Put in keyboards.”

Add a keyboard in Language and region options.

From the flyout choices, select a keyboard fashion for an additional language.

Choosing another language in your list of languages to be used.

Be aware: try this useful information to study different strategies of including new language keyboards to Home windows.

Within the age of high-speed Web, you too can search for your favourite emoji or symbols by means of a easy Google search. You simply have to copy-paste them from wherever you discover them. Emojipedia is a helpful web site with a large assortment of the most recent emojis.

There are many different workarounds to kind particular characters in Home windows, although they’re a bit past the scope of this text. Creating an AutoHotKey script in your continuously used characters is one such workaround. You too can set this system you’re typing in to routinely substitute sure letter mixtures with the image you need. Aside from Home windows, it is also doable to kind quite a lot of emojis on a Chromebook keyboard.

Picture credit score: Unsplash. All screenshots by Sayak Boral.