How to explore fonts and insert special characters on macOS

Most of your fonts contain thousands of characters, many more than you can access from the keyboard. If you want to get the most out of your fonts, then PopChar is the right tool for you.

PopChar makes it easy to "type" any character from any font. It displays the repertoires of your fonts, including thousands of characters that cannot be inserted using the keyboard.

PopChar X displays a small "P" in the menu bar. Though small and unobtrusive, the "P" is always there when you need to insert a special character - no matter in which application you are currently working.

This makes basic usage of PopChar easy: Just click the "P", find the desired character, and click the character to insert it. But PopChar can do much more than that. Read on to learn more about the many features of PopChar.

PopChar works with all modern applications that support Unicode. It makes it easy to navigate and search within fonts that contain thousands of characters. Search for characters by their names, find fonts that contain certain characters, explore the character set of fonts, collect your favorite characters, insert HTML symbols. PopChar makes all these font-related tasks easy.

With PopChar, you can also take a look at fonts from a designer's perspective – see a font preview, check out what a given text fragment looks like in a certain font, and print beautiful font sheets.

[marypearson]

I've been using PopChar for probably 20 years. I don't need it often but when I do, it's so great to have it! Wouldn't consider NOT having it. An absolute MUST HAVE imo. GREAT app!

[CatherineSTodd]

Finally! I've had PopChar for years and never known how to use it. Thanks for this video!

[NgakpaW]

I don’t know how many years I have been using PopChar. I know I have been through a lot of different Macs during this time. I have to say what a great tool it has been. It has allowed me to quickly find Unicode characters that are difficult to key.
I have primarily used it for Tibetan and various diacritics, and now I am using it for Sanskrit as well.

[warrenhuff]

PopChar Pro (Mac version) is one of my daily absolutely necessary tools. As a geologist I might be working on manuscripts, writing notes to students or discussing matters with colleagues, both national and international. Consequently, I often need either encrypted text in various languages or symbols, such as angstrom (Å) to convey my thoughts. All of this would be much less precise without PopChar Pro!

[macforme]

This a wonderful application... I highly recommend. Very helpful for making political comments : 😱or 🙄 or 🤢.