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.

Special symbols missing from character view menu & show up as a boxed x when displayed.

There are several symbols I'd like to type such as a half star that do not show up in the character view, and when shown online or typed in any document in any font, it is displayed as a boxed x.


I tried resetting the fonts and restarting, searching for an extension, and more without luck. How can I make these characters show up?


I have a Macbook Pro (macOS High Sierra 10.13.6).

MacBook Pro

Posted on Apr 4, 2022 9:47 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Apr 4, 2022 10:57 AM

lk771 wrote: There are several symbols I'd like to type such as a half star that do not show up in the character view

That normally just means that you will have to find a font that has them and download and install it on your machine.


Could you give details on exactly where you saw these characters?


This page lists some fonts which have U+2bea Star with Left Half Black, for example.


https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2bea/fontsupport.htm


In this case the fonts are probably not on most machines, so if you use this character in an email or document, it will not show up when you send it to someone else.

5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 4, 2022 10:57 AM in response to lk771

lk771 wrote: There are several symbols I'd like to type such as a half star that do not show up in the character view

That normally just means that you will have to find a font that has them and download and install it on your machine.


Could you give details on exactly where you saw these characters?


This page lists some fonts which have U+2bea Star with Left Half Black, for example.


https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2bea/fontsupport.htm


In this case the fonts are probably not on most machines, so if you use this character in an email or document, it will not show up when you send it to someone else.

Apr 4, 2022 10:59 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks for the quick reply! I first saw these characters on the Google Docs "insert special characters" menu, which is why I assumed they were a standard unicode symbol that should show up. I've included a photo of the half star I'm after as well as the google docs menu which is missing a ton of characters. I'm totally willing to download other fonts, keyboards, whatever. I feel like it should be simple but for some reason web searches are leading me no where.

Special symbols missing from character view menu & show up as a boxed x when displayed.

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