Find the Mac keyboard icons for the Control & Command keys

I had a problem today in that I was writing about the Mac but using a PC. I needed to type the character for the Command key on the Mac keyboard which, as you might know, is this cute twirly shape. But since I was working on a PC I didn’t have fonts which contained the character. After an hour or so of research, I found the character.

As luck would have it, it was where I should have looked to begin with, in my Wingdings font. To get it, in any document or any application that supports fonts, click to use the Wingdings font and type the lowercase z – voila – the Command key character.

So far, so good. But what about the other keys, like the Apple key and the Alt key on older keyboards? In the interests of helping you get everything you need in one post, if not in one font, here’s how to get hold of the characters for the Apple key and the Alt key:

Turns out the Alt key symbol isn’t as easy to find as it might be. Probably the quickest way to locate it is to download the free font Virtue from the ScooterGraphics site.

Once installed the font contains a range of characters including the Mac Alt key symbol and the Apple icon. To get the Alt key select the Virtue font and type Alt + 0221 on the keyboard. The Apple symbol is a little more difficult as it is a hex value so, switch to Virtue font, type F000 into a Word document and immediately (don’t press space) press Alt + X. This little bit of keyboard magic creates the little Apple logo for you. If you need it elsewhere, make it in Word and copy and paste it to the application you need to use it in.