how to make a tilde ~ (circa on mac MacBook)

If you have a MacBook Pro, the community in which you posted, rather than a MacBook, the computer you reference in your posts, then maybe the ~ is upper left of the keyboard just below the esc key.

Or, use the tilde key:

~

Shift and the key just between shift and Z...

This is what you get with alt-5: §

works with macbook pro retina european keyboard (qwerty

I have that machine, and an iMac, both with European keyboards..., and a third party logitech one too... and they all have a tilde key.