How to find secret characters on your smartphone keyboard

There are special characters on your smartphone keyboard that often seem hard to find: here's how to look for them

Some special characters on your smartphone keyboard are often very hard to find, but not impossible. If while writing a text message or a message on WhatsApp you can't find an unusual letter or a special character you need, you don't have to despair: you just need to know where to look.

In most smartphones, both Android and iOS, the layout of keyboards is very similar and they are often Qwerty keyboards. Both operating systems maximize space, which is why special characters and punctuation are often moved to a separate keyboard, but sometimes you can't find them on that either. For obvious space reasons, these characters or symbols are not always visible, but they are still available for your every writing need. The only problem is that you'll have to struggle a bit to find them, but the solution is very simple and we'll explain it to you.

How to find special characters and symbols on the keyboard

The easiest and most effective way to access all available characters and symbols is to explore your keyboard as best you can, whether it's on an Android smartphone or an iPhone. The first screen of the keyboard often shows in the first row at the top the numbers from 1 to 0, then the classic Qwerty keyboard. Usually, next to the space bar at the bottom, you'll find a key indicated with "?123". When you press it, you'll have the switch to another layout with numbers and all the major punctuation symbols you might need. In the screenshot, you'll probably also see a "1/2" symbol, indicating that you're only viewing the first page of 2 dedicated to special characters. Clicking on that symbol will open a new keyboard screen with more characters.

This way, you can explore the entire contents of the keyboard and its functionality. It may happen sometimes, however, that not all characters are viewable with this path. An even simpler solution comes to our rescue. Just press and hold the letter most similar to the one we want to insert in our text to open a small pop-up that will offer us the character we are looking for: by scrolling with your finger and selecting it, we will quickly insert it. For example, imagine you want to use "is", you'll just have to hold down "e" to see all the accented letter options. Same thing if you want to insert a "รง", by holding down the "c" you'll be able to find it. And if you need the underscore "_"? Just hold down the minus "-" symbol to access the character you want. All you have to do is try.