- In Windows, the simplest way to type special characters is with the Character Map, or
charmap.exe
. Scroll through, double-click the ° symbol you need, click Copy, and you can Paste it into your application. Notice though - while it's selected, there are codes at the bottom. On the left is the Unicode code,U+00B0
. This means that the system stores the degree character as hex00
andB0
. (Who cares? We'll come back to it.) On the right, you seeAlt-0176
. This means that when NumLock is turned on, you can hold Alt and type0176
on the number pad and get a degree symbol. - In Linux, we need that Unicode code. Press Ctrl-Shift-U, then type
00B0
and hit enter or space or whatever. The ° appears!
If you need to type something you haven't found in charmap, you can Google it. The lobster emoji, for example, is apparently 1F99E
. So, on my Linux system, I hit Ctrl-Shift-U, enter the code, and get 🦞!
Want to type a lobster in Win 10? If you're up-to-date on patches, you can hold Win and press . or ; to get the emoji picker.
Mac user? See if this helps: https://poynton.ca/notes/misc/mac-unicode-hex-input.html