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If you need special characters on iOS it’s quite a pain, because despite the “pro” label Apple likes to claim, on my iPad there’s no way to access the ⌘ character quickly! The marketing guys keep hammering that the iPad is the new computer — but what they’re really interested in is the mandatory trip through the App Store.
There is an app for finding what’s native on macOS — a list of special characters — you can try it, it’s free for the main characters.
If you only need a few characters handy — for me it’s the ⌘ and ⌥ symbols — here’s a free little tip.
You’re going to use the text replacement feature built into iOS and macOS. It’s a little-known feature, yet incredibly effective. It lets you specify a string of characters that will be replaced by the text of your choice.
In our case, you just need to copy the ⌘ character (or whichever one you want), then associate a string of characters that will trigger the replacement. So when you type “;cmd”, that string gets replaced by ⌘.
So now, anywhere I type “;cmd” the system replaces it with ⌘! Handy, right?
Of course you can — and I strongly encourage you to — use this feature to store things you write most often, which will save you time and prevent mistakes. For example, “@mail” to help you quickly type your email address. Some people use it to replace text with their favourite emoji, though the Touch Bar on the ⌨️ Mac 💻 is already great for that 😂.
