Alternatives to the MacOS Unicode Hex Input Source

by: Tom Gewecke

Last modified: Mar 28, 2023 1:34 PM

1 555 Last modified Mar 28, 2023 1:34 PM

NOTE: The bug which this User Tip addresses was fixed in MacOS Ventura 13.3.

Some users (such as those familiar with Windows alt codes) like to type special characters with the MacOS Unicode Hex Input Source. Unfortunately in Monterey and Ventura this keyboard is currently unable to type characters of the form U+0xx0, i.e. those with hex codes both beginning and ending in zero.

Pending a fix for this problem, some alternatives for users who want to make special characters in this category are Apple's Character Viewer, creating a text replacement, or making a custom keyboard layout with Ukelele. Text replacements could even use the hex codes of the missing characters as the triggers.

256 code points are affected, but not all are occupied. A chart of the characters involved is below: