You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Character Viewer on iOS for iPhone or iPad

Greetings,


On MacOS, when opening “System Preference”, then “Keyboard” and finally “Input Source”, there is an option to “Show Input menu in menu bar” which can be clicked to reveal “Show Emoji & Symbols” where I can open a floating window titled “Character Viewer”.


This viewer is much more than a mere Emoji keyboard, since it lists alongside “Emoji” a whole range of symbols including “Maths Symbols” and “Pictographs”. Now, opening the Emoji keyboard is done very differently on iOS devices, since it comes alongside the virtual on-screen keyboards of the different layouts and languages you can choose in “Settings”.


Does iOS not feature a native character viewer which spans more symbols than only Emojis which can be typed using the virtual Emoji keyboard, is there any way to access within iOS a list of characters such as the ones available alongside Emojis in the Character Viewer of macOS?


(This feature would be greatly missed when passing from a MacBook Pro 13' to an iPad Pro 12.9' together with the Logitech keyboard with integrated trackpad. It was already a big leap backwards to not have any three finger click-and-drag gesture, and the interface is generally seriously limited compared to what a MacBook can do. I'll be fine if I can't type the Mahjong Joker Tile, but there has got to be a way to access those tasty maths symbols that didn't make it into the standard Apple layout, such as ∇ or ∉, in the mean time I'm okay pasting it from a reference file in my iCloud folder switching back and forth between apps, but come on…)


Best regards,

Matt

iPad (5th gen) Wi-Fi

Posted on Nov 8, 2021 10:37 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 8, 2021 11:59 AM

MattFWH wrote: Does iOS not feature a native character viewer which spans more symbols than only Emojis which can be typed using the virtual Emoji keyboard, is there any way to access within iOS a list of characters such as the ones available alongside Emojis in the Character Viewer of macOS?

No. There are various 3rd party apps that do it instead. I like UnicodePad.


Also you can set up Text Replacements for ones you need frequently.


To ask Apple to add a native character viewer, you can go to


http://www.apple.com/feedback


2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 8, 2021 11:59 AM in response to MattFWH

MattFWH wrote: Does iOS not feature a native character viewer which spans more symbols than only Emojis which can be typed using the virtual Emoji keyboard, is there any way to access within iOS a list of characters such as the ones available alongside Emojis in the Character Viewer of macOS?

No. There are various 3rd party apps that do it instead. I like UnicodePad.


Also you can set up Text Replacements for ones you need frequently.


To ask Apple to add a native character viewer, you can go to


http://www.apple.com/feedback


Nov 8, 2021 1:34 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Dear Tom Gewecke,


Thank you for your suggestion, I will try it out. Text replacement will probably be an easy fix for now, in truth there are only so many symbols I ever need to use at once for each session. At least I now know that I was not simply looking in the wrong place, let us hope the feature makes its way onto future versions of iPadOS.


Best regards,

Matt

Character Viewer on iOS for iPhone or iPad

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.