How to type special characters and symbols on a Chromebook

What do you usually do when you have to type a euro sign? Do you google the word euro sign and copy the symbol? Or do you go for the real way: Alt, Ctrl and 5 at the same time? Typing special symbols on a Chromebook is often slightly different, but there are tricks for that.

Chromebook keyboard

If you look at a regular QWERTY keyboard, you can often find many special characters as an extra option on each button as standard. It often works slightly differently on a Chromebook. You won’t find all the signs there. Fortunately, you can teach yourself Unicode shortcuts. Unicode is the system that allows you to type special symbols and characters. You type a code into your computer for this and then the associated symbol appears on your screen. Those codes also exist on Windows computers, but it is often slightly different there.

In this article, we focus on the Chromebook. If you want to type a special character, you can open a Google Doc, for example. Then choose Ctrl+Shift+U at the same time and release them at the same time. Then type the code for the symbol you want to use, such as 2014 (dash) and press enter. You will then see the dash appear. If it doesn’t work, try again or check if the code you’re using is correct. There are hundreds of them, so don’t be ashamed of them.

Codes to type symbols

In any case, you don’t have to know them all by heart, but it is smart to memorize the signs you often use. There are a few characters on the Chromebook that are useful to remember because they are slightly different, namely:

Emoji tapping

If you don’t want to use regular characters, but create emoji, it is useful to click to the right of your cursor when typing. A menu will appear with an option being ‘Emoji’. When you open it you get an emoji menu. It is then up to you which smiley or icon you wish to use. Are all those codes to remember too much work? Then use an extension, such as utf-8 and unicode characters. Here you will see a list of characters and you only have to copy and paste. (Thanks 9to5Google)

So you certainly don’t have to feel like a handicapped person with a Chromebook because not everything on your keyboard is pre-chewed. Hopefully you can handle the codes well, but if you prefer to use an extension: have fun. 😉

Do you have any other handy tricks or extensions for this purpose? Leave it in the comments.