Displaying different font characters

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Level 1

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Displaying different font characters

In earlier interations of MacOS, there was a screen that showed the different characters for the different fonts. For example if I wanted to know what key combination displayed a check mark in Wingdings, I could go to that font, and see what would be displayed. I can't seem to find anything like that in newer Mac OS. Is there still a way to show what might be displayed if Hold down the shift key in Wingdings font? Seems to me it used to be called KeyCaps or something like that in MacOS 6. Thanks for the help.

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 12, 2020 9:02 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,440 points

Oct 12, 2020 10:28 AM in response to jbparker94

jbparker94 wrote:

Is there still a way to show what might be displayed if Hold down the shift key in Wingdings font?

These days everybody normally uses Unicode, under which you switch keyboards/input palettes instead of fonts. That guarantees that others will see your character even if they do not have some special font installed. So to make symbols, you should use the Character Viewer

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-emoji-and-symbols-on-mac-mchlp1560/10.14/mac/10.14

Type "check" into the search box

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Answer 2

Kurt Lang

Level 9

62,184 points

Oct 12, 2020 9:18 AM in response to jbparker94

A lot of that has gone away, starting back in El Capitan. Maybe earlier.

The Keyboard layout no longer has a way to select a particular font. It's very generic, and because of that can't show you what characters which keys will produce for all fonts.

The Character Viewer also used to have a way to select a specific font so you could see every glyph available for that one font. Also gone.

About the best alternative I've found is Ultra Character Map. It's available in the App Store.

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Displaying different font characters

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