Type Characters Not On Your Keyboard

How do you type a € character when your keyboard only has $ on it? Or maybe you need è, é, or ñ. What about a fancy ° degree sign? And how about emojis? Technically those are characters, too!

KDE Linux offers multiple ways:

KCharSelect

Easy to learn, but slow to use.

The KCharSelect app lets you visually search and browse through the entire catalog of characters available across all languages — including emojis. Once you’ve found the appropriate character, you can copy it to the clipboard for pasting elsewhere.

KCharSelect is not pre-installed, but can be installed using the Discover software center.

Install KCharSelect now

Compose Key

Fast to use once you get the hang of it, but requires some learning.

See how the Euro symbol (€) looks kind of like the letter C with an equals sign through it?

To type € directly, press the Compose key, then C, then =.

Easy!

Similarly, to get é, press Compose, then e, then '.

ñ is made with Compose, n, ~.

° is made with Compose, o, o

… is made with Compose, ., .

…And so on.

But which key is the Compose key? Your keyboard probably doesn’t have one. In this case, you’ll need to re-bind an existing key you rarely or never use to act as a Compose key.

To do this:

  1. Open System Settings
  2. Click Keyboard in the sidebar
  3. Click Key Bindings in the window header
  4. Scroll down to where it says Position of Compose Key and click on it
  5. Choose a key to be your new Compose key! Some keys that are good candidates because they are otherwise rarely used are Caps Lock, Insert, Pause, and Scroll Lock.

Compose key sequences are generally intuitive, but to see the full list of options, open a terminal window and run:

rg Multi_key /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose | cut -d "\"" -f 1,2 | cat

Emoji Picker

Easy and fast, but limited to emojis.

KDE Linux includes the Emoji Picker app which offers a more streamlined emoji-picking experience compared to using KCharSelect. To launch it from anywhere, press Meta+..

From there, you can search or browse for an emoji, and click on it to copy it to the clipboard tor pasting elsewhere. Emoji Picker automatically remembers the last emojis you used, too.

Article contributed by under the CC-BY-4.0 license.