Character Palette

What is a Character Palette?

A character palette (also called a character viewer, character map, or character picker) is a system tool or application that lets users browse, search, and insert Unicode characters without needing to memorize their code points or keyboard shortcuts. These tools are indispensable for inserting mathematical symbols, diacritics, emoji, currency signs, arrows, and characters from scripts you do not have a keyboard layout for.

macOS Character Viewer

On macOS, the Character Viewer is accessible via the keyboard shortcut Control + Command + Space, or through the Edit menu in most text-editing applications. It provides:

• A categorized browser grouped by emoji, symbols, punctuation, letters, and more
• A search box that accepts Unicode names and keywords
• A "Recently Used" section for quick re-insertion
• A detail panel showing the character's Unicode name, code point, and related variants

Developers can expand the viewer to a full window (click the icon in the top-right corner) to access more categories including Technical Symbols, Math Symbols, Braille, and Letter-Like Symbols. Once you find a character, double-clicking inserts it at the current cursor position.

Windows Character Map and Emoji Picker

Windows ships two separate tools for Unicode input:

Character Map (charmap.exe) is the traditional tool — accessible from Start by typing "charmap". It shows a grid of all characters in a selected font, allows filtering by Unicode subrange, and displays the Alt code (for legacy input method) alongside the code point. A search box is available in Windows 10 and later.

Win + . (period) opens the modern Emoji Picker — a floating panel with emoji organized by category, plus a search bar. In Windows 11, the picker also includes Kaomoji (text-art faces) and special symbols. It inserts characters directly into the focused input field.

Linux: GNOME Character Map (gucharmap)

gucharmap is the standard character browser for GNOME-based Linux desktops. Install it with:

sudo apt install gucharmap   # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install gucharmap   # Fedora

gucharmap is built on top of the Unicode Character Database and groups characters by Unicode block. Clicking a character shows its full properties: name, code point, category, combining class, mirroring, and UTF-8/UTF-16 encodings. Double-clicking copies it to an internal clipboard, and the text entry field at the bottom lets you build a string of multiple characters.

KDE Plasma users have KCharSelect, which offers similar functionality with an additional search-by-Unicode-property feature.

Browser Extensions and Web Tools

Several browser extensions add character input to the browser:

• UnicodeInput (Firefox/Chrome) — type a code point and get the character
• SymbolIt — searchable symbol inserter in the toolbar

Web-based character pickers on sites like unicodefyi.com, fileformat.info, and shapecatcher.com (draw a character and get matches) serve users without admin rights to install system tools.

Input Method Editors (IME)

For scripts requiring complex input — Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Devanagari — users rely on Input Method Editors (IMEs), which convert sequences of keystrokes into the target characters. These are distinct from character palettes but serve the broader goal of making Unicode input accessible.

Quick Facts