I live in Europe and am always looking for characters that aren’t on the U.S. English keyboard on my Mac. I found a pretty cool web page last year with the Mac keyboard short cuts at Washington State University. A few of the keys are different with Mac OS X Lion, but overall it’s close. I wanted an updated reference and I added the visual Keyboard Viewer graphics. They are a nice visual overview of what’s available.
Mac OS X Lion did add a pretty cool new feature. If you hold down a key with one of the accents, a little selector bubble will appear over your cursor. Here’s what happens when I hold the letter a down:
That’s a pretty cool trick. My son, Spencer, pointed out that this is how the iPhone works.
Here’s the Mac OS X Lion Keyboard Shortcuts Reference… enjoy!
U.S. Keyboard
With the Option Key
With the Option + Shift Keys
| Accent | Key Strokes | Available Characters |
|---|---|---|
| Grave ` | option ` + the character | À È Ì Ò Ù à è ì ò ù |
| Acute ´ | option e + the character | Á É Í Ó Ú á é í ó ú |
| Circumflex ^ | option i + the character | Â Ê Î Ô Û â ê î ô û |
| Tilde ~ | option n + the character | Ã Ñ Õ ã ñ õ |
| Umlaut ¨ | option u + the character | Ä Ë Ï Ö Ü Ÿ ä ë ï ö ü ÿ |
| Key
Stroke |
+Option | +Option-
Shift |
Key
Stroke |
+Option | +Option-
Shift |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | å | Å | 0 | º | ‚ | |
| B | ∫ | ı | 1 | ¡ | ⁄ | |
| C | ç | Ç | 2 | ™ | € | |
| D | ∂ | Î | 3 | £ | ‹ | |
| E | ´ | 4 | ¢ | › | ||
| F | ƒ | Ï | 5 | ∞ | fi | |
| G | © | ˝ | 6 | § | fl | |
| H | ˙ | Ó | 7 | ¶ | ‡ | |
| I | ˆ | 8 | • | ° | ||
| J | ∆ | Ô | 9 | ª | · | |
| K | ˚ | - | – | — | ||
| L | ¬ | Ò | = | ≠ | ± | |
| M | µ | Â | [ | “ | ” | |
| N | ˜ | ] | ‘ | ’ | ||
| O | ø | Ø | \ | « | » | |
| P | π | ∏ | ; | … | Ú | |
| Q | œ | Œ | ‘ | æ | Æ | |
| R | ® | ‰ | , | ≤ | ¯ | |
| S | ß | Í | . | ≥ | ˘ | |
| T | † | ˇ | / | ÷ | ¿ | |
| U | ¨ | |||||
| V | √ | ◊ | ||||
| W | ∑ | „ | ||||
| X | ≈ | ˛ | ||||
| Y | ¥ | Á | ||||
| Z | Ω | ¸ |
Does anyone know how to disable this feature?
Hi Bryant,
I don’t know if you can as it is built into Lion. I’ll google a bit for it. Does anyone else know?
Oh goodness, please tell me you’ve figured out a way to disable this pop-up bubble feature. I think I may just go insane.
I want to disable this feature. I didn’t like!!!
I’m not sure if you can. If you don’t use it, it shouldn’t get in the way.
This is fantastic. I thought I’d have to use Special Characters, which is a non-starter. Now, it’s a breeze to write in French. I wonder what else Lion has stored inside?
I was always struggling to find special characters too and now it’s dead simple. My wife is a native Dutch speaker and LOVES this feature. She’s also fluent in German and French, which use special characters of course, so she’s quite happy with this ability.