How to type symbols on Chromebook

Chromebooks being simple devices have similar-natured keyboards as well. You’ll find most of the valuable stuff right out of the box with them—just the same as any other laptop—but for the extra inputs that get things going, you’ll have to put in a bit of extra effort.

In this article, we’ll show you how you can type symbols on your Chromebook without having to search for them individually or go through the tedious copy and paste scenario. So without any further ado, then, let’s get right into it.

Option #1. Use the Shift Button

A Chromebook’s keyboard works similar to other desktop PCs for the most part. This means that you’re able to do almost everything on a Chromebook as you would on a keyboard of a Windows PC. Now that we know this information, it’s time to implement the age-old method of typing symbols on Chrome OS.

To type symbols on a Chromebook, press and hold “Shift” and press the relevant key representing the symbol that you need to input. For instance, the number row on your keyboard represents a diversity of different symbols, starting with the exclamation mark and ending with the plus sign right before the “backspace” key.

To type the Dollar sign symbol, hold “Shift” and press the “4” key. That should do it quickly. Now, what you should do here is take a close, hard look at your Chromebook’s keyboard and acknowledge what keys can be used for typing symbols. As we iterated earlier, the number row is all about symbols, but the right side of the keyboard is also filled with special characters that you can type.

The following is a round-up of some of the most famous symbols that people usually type and how you can implement them on your Chromebook.

• Shift + 1: !
• Shift + 2: @
• Shift + 3: #
• Shift + 4: $
• Shift + 5: %
• Shift + 6: ^
• Shift + 7: &
• Shift + 8: *
• Shift + 9: (
• Shift + 10: )

Lastly, you can combine Shift with characters like underscore, plus, and the different types of parentheses on your Chromebook’s keyboard to get the relevant symbols.

This is all about the first option for typing symbols on a Chromebook easily. It’s recommended to use these special characters this way, but if you want to know another option, look at the following section.

Option #2. Unicode for Symbol Input

Unicode has become a standard for modern-day keyboard inputs and represents a broad spectrum of characters. For every character, Unicode comprises a set of digits. All inputs have been predetermined, and the system Unicode proposes is unequivocally adopted by everyone across the globe.

Using this method, you can start typing symbols, emojis, and other special characters comfortably on your Chromebook’s keyboard. We’ll explain how in the next subtitle.

How to use Unicode on Chromebook

Fortunately, Unicode comprises zero complexity. All you have to do is follow the steps listed below to start getting the hang of it. We recommend this method if your Chromebook’s keyboard does not work and you’d like a temporary replacement with the help of your mouse.

1) Press and hold “CTRL + Shift,” followed by a prompt press of the “U” key on your keyboard. This will make a certain “u” appear but with a distinct underline.

2) Right after that, you will type in a set of digits and letters representing a character. Let’s take the example of the character “Division sign” for now. To input this symbol, type in “00f7” beside the Unicode “u.” When you’re done, press the “Enter” key.

3) If you’ve followed the steps correctly, this “÷” symbol should appear on your screen.

Unicode is probably the most effective method of typing symbols on Chromebooks or any desktop device, for that matter. To make it even more productive and useful for users, its website has drafted an entire table that consists of all the special characters one could incorporate more or less. Check this table out by clicking on this link. Also, Wikipedia has done the same thing in its fashion.

To give you a brief overview of Unicode’s website, if you see a character that catches your attention and you’d like to use it somewhere, hover over it and give it a click. The character would enlarge and give you an option to copy its Unicode number with just a tap.

Unicode Symbols Table

In the illustrative screenshot above, we highlighted the symbol of the British currency, “Pound.” As you can see, the Unicode number is visible and can be entered manually. All it would take is to follow the steps that we wrote above, which would lead to successful symbol inputs, just like this – £.

A point to ponder, each symbol has a different and unique Unicode number. Therefore, it might take you a few inputs to memorize the Unicode numbers of your desired symbols. Rest assured, the process is easy, and you can even copy and paste, too, if you like.