Typing a tilde(~) on a MacBook

pfaasurfin01 wrote: To be very specific, I use a MacBook Air 15" M2 2023 (Base model).

You left out the most important info: Your keyboard input language. Apple has dozens of them, and how you make ~ can vary a lot.

On the standard US keyboard/input source, there is no need for a space after doing Shift on the button next to 1.

If you by chance you are using English and want to avoid that extra step, you can go to system settings > keyboard > text input > edit > input sources and use the minus button to remove the item called "US International PC" and replace it with US or ABC.

In general to see what all the keys do, you can use

Use the Keyboard Viewer on Mac - Apple Support

I don’t see that anyone has pointed this out, but what you discovered is the “chording” or “dead” keys that allow you to create combined diacritics with the various associated letters.

On the layout you are now using, type option-e, then type an a. You should get á. That was the old method of creating those combined characters. Now you just hold the letter down to see all of the options.

Thanks for posting that information. Hopefully you know to use the same shift key procedure to type any symbol in that row:

~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ +