How to Type Special Symbols on iPhone and Android

Last reviewed on May 7, 2026

Phones make it harder to type symbols than desktop computers. There's no Option key, no numeric keypad, and screen real estate is too small for a full character map. The good news is that both iOS and Android have several built-in approaches for typing the symbols people actually use most. This page covers all of them with a recommendation for which to learn first.

The four mobile approaches

1. Long-press a key to reveal accent and symbol variants of that key. Best for accents, currency, and a handful of typographic symbols.
2. Switch to the symbol keyboard (the 123 or ?123 button). Best for everyday punctuation, math operators, and currency.
3. Use the emoji keyboard for color emoji including hearts and faces. Best for chat and social.
4. Set up text replacement for symbols you use repeatedly. Best for power users who type the same symbol every day.

iPhone (iOS)

Long-press for variants

On the standard iOS keyboard, holding a key for half a second pops up a row of related characters. Slide to the one you want and release.

• Long-press $ → ¢ £ € ¥ ₹ (rupee) and others.
• Long-press ? → ¿ (inverted question mark, for Spanish).
• Long-press ! → ¡ (inverted exclamation).
• Long-press " → the four curly-quote variants and the German guillemets.
• Long-press ' → the curly single quotes and the proper apostrophe.
• Long-press - → en dash, em dash, and the bullet.
• Long-press a vowel (a, e, i, o, u) → accented forms (à, á, ã, ö, û, etc.).
• Long-press n → ñ.
• Long-press 0 on the number keyboard → the degree sign °.
• Long-press the % key → the per-mille sign ‰.
• Long-press = → ≠ and ≈.

Discovering the long-press menus is mostly a matter of trying. Almost every key on the symbol layout has at least one variant.

Switch to the symbol keyboard

Tap 123 for numbers and basic punctuation, then #+= for less common symbols. Together these give you brackets, the bullet, the section sign, and most ASCII operators. The math operators on the second symbol page reach the multiplication sign × and the division sign ÷ without long-pressing anything.

Emoji keyboard

Tap the smiley icon at the bottom of the keyboard (or the globe icon, then the smiley) to switch to emoji. The search field at the top accepts plain English: type heart and any of the colored heart emoji appear; type star and the various star emoji come up. Tap to insert.

For the line-art suit hearts (♥) rather than the colored emoji hearts, copy them from the hearts and love page — iOS doesn't include the suit characters in the standard keyboard.

Text Replacement

Open Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement and add a phrase + shortcut pair. Type the shortcut while writing and iOS auto-replaces it.

• Phrase: ° → Shortcut: ;deg
• Phrase: © → Shortcut: ;c
• Phrase: ™ → Shortcut: ;tm
• Phrase: π → Shortcut: ;pi
• Phrase: → → Shortcut: ;a-r

Text replacements sync across iCloud-connected devices, so the same shortcuts work on iPad and Mac too.

Dictation

Hold the microphone key and say a punctuation name out loud: “copyright sign,” “trademark,” “degree sign,” “em dash,” “ellipsis,” “at sign.” Dictation knows most common punctuation by name. It does not know mathematical operators or arrows.

Android

The default Android keyboard is Gboard, but many devices ship with Samsung's keyboard, SwiftKey, or another OEM variant. The mechanics are similar across them.

Long-press for variants

Holding a key on Gboard reveals a popup of variants, the same way iOS does. The set is similar:

• Long-press a vowel → accented forms.
• Long-press $ → other currency symbols.
• Long-press the period → ellipsis and other punctuation.
• Long-press the dash → en dash and em dash.
• Long-press ? → inverted forms.

The full symbol keyboard

Tap ?123 for numbers and primary punctuation, then =\< for the secondary symbol layer with brackets, math operators, the bullet, the section sign, and many others.

Emoji and sticker keyboard

The emoji button is at the bottom-left of the Gboard layout. Search by name or browse categories. Recently used emoji appear at the top.

Personal dictionary (text shortcuts)

Open Settings → System → Languages & input → Personal dictionary (the path varies slightly across Android versions). Add an entry with the symbol as the word and a short trigger as the shortcut. Type the shortcut and the symbol appears as a suggestion above the keyboard; tap to insert.

Voice typing

Gboard's voice typing recognizes most English punctuation by name: “ellipsis,” “em dash,” “at sign,” “copyright,” “degree sign,” “new paragraph.” Like iOS dictation, it doesn't recognize math operators or arrows.

Third-party keyboards for symbols

Both Android and iOS allow third-party keyboards. There are dedicated keyboards that present a Unicode symbol grid as the primary input. They work best when paired with a primary keyboard you switch back to for ordinary typing.

The copy-paste path

For symbols you don't type often, copy-paste from this site is the simplest path on a phone. The site is responsive and the copy-on-tap behavior works in mobile browsers.

1. Open allsymbols.org in your browser.
2. Search for the symbol or browse a category like aesthetic, smileys, or hearts.
3. Tap the symbol — it copies to the clipboard.
4. Switch to the destination app and paste.

The home page remembers your recently copied symbols in your browser's local storage, so the next visit shows them at the top.

Common pitfalls on phones

• Autocorrect changing the symbol. Some keyboards autocorrect dashes back to hyphens or curly quotes back to straight ones. If a symbol keeps changing after you type it, turn off autocorrect for that text field or disable specific corrections in the keyboard settings.
• The wrong heart shape. Phones default the heart emoji (❤) to red color presentation. If you want the line-art suit heart that takes the surrounding text color, paste the suit heart character explicitly — phones don't expose it in the standard keyboard.
• Pasting strips the symbol. Some plain-text fields downgrade non-ASCII characters silently. If you paste — and see -- in the result, the field is downgrading. Try pasting into a different field to confirm.
• Tofu boxes. A square box where a character should be means the device's font doesn't include the code point. Newer Unicode characters — the bitcoin sign, recent emoji additions — are the most likely to show as tofu on older phones. See the tofu rendering page.

Where to go next

For symbols you'll type often on a desktop too, see keyboard shortcuts on Windows, Mac, and Linux. For the full catalog browsable on a phone, the home page search covers every symbol on the site by name and keyword. The symbol text generator is also phone-friendly — type a phrase and tap a styled version to copy.