Unicode for iPhone: Copy and paste special characters and symbols

Introduction

Personalize your messages, e-mails and tweets with all kinds of special symbols and characters — that will be readable on any iPhone, Mac and most PC applications.

Unicode gives you several pages of quickly accessible symbols; you can just touch a symbol and quit the app, it's already in your clipboard, ready to be pasted anywhere you want it. Or you can use Unicode's text field to work on a tweet, mixing text and symbols, and copy the whole text when you're done by touching the big scissors.

Unicode is a Universal app for iPhone and iPad. Available in English and in French.

	App Store: Unicode $1.99
	Follow the app on Twitter: @unicodeapp
	Become a fan On Facebook

User's Guide

You can scroll through several pages of symbols; the first page lists your favorites, which you can modify at any time, and the other pages show the most common symbols. If you're looking for more unusual characters, the final page gives you a scrolling list of pretty much every single special character that can be displayed on the iPhone.

When you tap a symbol, either on a button or in the scrolling list, it is immediately copied to the pasteboard: you can quit the application right away, and paste the special character wherever you want.

If you want to construct a whole sentence with various symbols in the middle, you can do that within the app: every symbol you tap after you've launched the application is added to an area at the top where you can also type and edit text with the regular iPhone keyboard. Once you're done setting up what you want to write, just tap the “Copy” button and it's in the pasteboard.

To add a favorite to the application's home page, tap-and-hold a symbol's button in the other pages, or tap the “plus” button in the scrolling list. You can also tap-and-hold an empty button on the home page to paste a symbol that is already in your pasteboard.
To remove a favorite, tap-and-hold its button on the home page.

FAQ

Where is the Apple logo?

The Apple logo is, obviously, trademarked by Apple — so they would never have accepted on the App Store an application that used it. Besides, it is not technically a valid unicode character, so it won't be compatible with every computer (particularly PCs).

If you want to add it to Unicode anyway, you can do so manually: just tap-and-hold the apple below in Safari until a menu offers you to copy it:



Now launch Unicode and tap-and-hold an empty button on the home page; a dialog box will offer you to memorize your favorite. (Make sure to tap an empty button, or the contents of your pasteboard will be overwritten.)

How can I get more symbols?

Version 1.2 and up of Unicode includes pretty much every single unicode symbol that can be displayed on an iPhone. But, if you find something missing, you can add your own favorites to the application's home page: just copy a special character from another application (e.g., by tapping-and-holding a symbol displayed in Safari), then launch Unicode and tap-and-hold an empty button on the home page (make sure it's an empty button, or your pasteboard's contents will be overwritten).

Make sure you copy a single character in Safari before launching Unicode: if there are several characters in your pasteboard, Unicode (as of version 1.2) will only copy the first one — that includes any spaces that may have been copied alongside the special character you wanted.

For instance, if you're looking for an unbreakable space ( ) for your blog posts, you can select and copy this character: “ ” and add it to your favorites, but you have to make sure that you don't select the quote marks along with the space.