• ⌘ Command (or Cmd)
• ⇧ Shift
• ⌥ Option (or Alt)
• ⌃ Control (or Ctrl)

More generally, Mac OS X provides a pane to insert special characters. You'll find it under Edit -> Emoji and Symbols in any program that takes text input. The Command key symbol can be found by searching for it's name "place of interest". To insert the character, double click it.

If you're really hardcore and are looking for a way to type the character by entering the Unicode hex code, this is possible:

1. Go into System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Input Sources, click "+", scroll to "others", select "Unicode Hex Input" and click "Add"

2. From the input source selector in the menu bar, select "Unicode Hex Input"

3. To enter a Unicode character, hold down option and type the 4-digit hex code for the character and it will be inserted. In this case, it would be option+2318.

• 25
  Wow, I was sure that would be some option-key way to type a ⌘. But there isn't! I just looked through every possible variation of the keyboard viewer and it's just... not... there!

  – Josh

  Dec 20, 2010 at 23:55
• 16
  starting with Lion, to see the Technical Symbols in the Special Characters window you'll need to click into Settings to "Customize List..." and add it to your view.

  – rymo

  Jan 2, 2013 at 19:03
• 4
  In El Capitan, select "Other" in the Language list and then select "Unicode Hex Input"

  – Ken

  Mar 30, 2016 at 13:35
• 2
  @nyxee On OSX (macOS) 10.12.4, these symbols are not there by default. One needs to open the viewer, then open the settings (the littler wheal on top left) Customize List... > (scroll down) > Check Technical Symbols. I was not allowed to post images here, sorry..

  – bauerMusic

  May 7, 2017 at 5:51
• 1
  "Place of interest" hmm… interesting name for the "Command key" :p

  – Pankaj Jangid

  Jul 20, 2019 at 9:36

An answer for OSX Lion (circa 2014):

You can also type ⌘+^+Space (aka Cmd-Ctrl-Space) to bring up the characters menu, then start typing to search, and search for place of interest, then press enter to start selecting them, then tab to the correct result, then enter again to insert it.

Sounds like a lot, but it can really be narrowed down to ⌘+^+Space, typing pla, and then two presses of Return.

• 12
  IMHO this is the best answer, as it can be done entirely with keyboard and doesn't require any special setup. ^-⌘-<space>, p, l, <enter><enter>. Once you've used it once, you don't even need to type the pl next time.

  – Steve Bennett

  Aug 19, 2014 at 0:47
• On OS X 10.8.5 here the shortcut seems to be ⌘⌥T, but I can't find where that's defined. ^-⌘-<space> doesn't do anything for me.

  – Daniel

  Jun 10, 2015 at 0:52
• 1
  ^-⌘-<space> is not working for me on OSX 10.12.4. I get the popup with the symbols. but when i click on them, nothing is displayed in any Text editor. I also tried to enter p, l first but nothing happened.

  – nyxee

  May 6, 2017 at 8:25
• 1
  It used to be ⌥⌘T, but they changed it. I used System Preferences to switch it back. (:

  – SilverWolf

  Nov 13, 2017 at 15:23
• Character Viewer & ⌘+^+Space

  – xgqfrms

  Jun 15, 2020 at 4:56

I also found it hard to find a straight answer for this, so I just went into System Preferences > Keyboard > Text (or Text Input) > Text Replacements and created a use symbol and text substitution option where when I type (cmd) it replaces it with the command symbol.

• In Mavericks at least, this is under System Preferences > Keyboard > Text.

  – Steve Bennett

  Aug 19, 2014 at 0:44
• Great solution. Substitution characters here. The characters shown can be copied and pasted for each substitution.

  – Julian A.

  Jun 29, 2015 at 22:50
• 1
  Love this solution. just copy and paste this ... ⌘ into the "With" column.

  – Artistan

  Sep 2, 2015 at 18:27
• Is there anything else i need to do for this to work please? I went to Keyboard > Text, added cmd and ⌘, went to a text editor, I typed cmd followed by the Enter key, but the cmd did not magically turn into the ⌘ symbol. I'm using OSX 10.12.4.

  – nyxee

  May 6, 2017 at 8:28
• This is a more usable solution than any higher answers, should be accepted answer IMO :)

  – BadPirate

  Nov 28, 2023 at 17:11

For future reference, you can copy and paste from here:

⌃  <- Control
⌥  <- Option aka alt
⌘  <- Command
⇧  <- Shift

These are rendered like this:

• How do I create the little section you have in the grey segment above?

  – Harry McGovern

  Feb 24, 2020 at 11:57
• Just 4 spaces before each line, and an empty line above and beneath the section

  – Chris

  Feb 25, 2020 at 12:05
• No, I mean the character itself. The Control, Alt, and Command icons?

  – Harry McGovern

  Feb 25, 2020 at 15:57
• 2
  @HarryMcGovern For how to type the Command icon, this question might help you: apple.stackexchange.com/questions/4074/…

  – Jon Schneider

  Feb 25, 2020 at 17:05
• apple.stackexchange.com/questions/55727/…

  – pkamb

  Feb 27, 2020 at 20:27

You can also add Your favourite characters to "press and hold" key behaviour.

Here's explanation how to do it on apple stackexchange: How to add characters to the press and hold character picker in OS X Lion?

Keep in mind that this is done inside System directory, so be careful and remember that there's a chance of losing Your setup after upgrading the OS.

If you have TextExpander, one can also make a snippet for it, ala Dr. Drang.

He also has a Keyboard Library with snippets for a host of keyboard symbols available.

With the document open, place the cursor where you want the symbol, Open the Character Viewer as described above. Type "Place of Interest" in the character viewer search field. It shows up on at the bottom of the window. Double click it and it shows up where you placed your cursor. Save it to your favorites in the Character Viewer window to make it easier to find next time. This under OS 10.9.1 "Mavericks"

This is the simple way on how to do it.

1. Download BetterTouchTool
2. Open the application
3. Select 'keyboard'
4. Click Add New Shortcut
5. Set keyboard shortcut to 'Option+C'
6. Set trigger predefined action to 'Paste predefined text'
7. Copy '⌘' into the box.
8. Click Ok

Now whenever BetterTouchTool is open all you have to do is press 'Option+C' and it automatically types the '⌘' symbol.

You only have to do steps one to eight once.

How to type the modifier key glyphs on MacOs:

1. "control+command+space" in any application
2. type "up arrowhead" to find: ⌃ (control)
3. type "option" to find: ⌥ (option / alt)
4. type "place of interest" to find: ⌘ (command / super)
5. type "upwards white arrow" to find ⇧ (shift)

• I can't find shift ⇧ for the life of me.

  – Joel Mellon

  Mar 15, 2021 at 23:46
• that's "upwards white arrow" or ⇧ I found it on amp-what.com

  – Rowe Morehouse

  Mar 16, 2021 at 14:42
• 1
  Oh nice! Typing "upward" into the emoji viewer, pulls it up. It's quite a bit fatter than when rendered in the font that inline code blocks do here, but it appears to be the same char (⇧) or ⇧.

  – Joel Mellon

  Mar 18, 2021 at 22:36

For what it's worth (on OSX and maybe Windows): In Libre Offices's Writer I found the symbol as the 5th entry in both the LiHei Pro and LiSong fonts.

The Mac Characters popup is definitely the straightforward solution if you need to insert some chacters once in a while. But if you regularly need to use Unicode characters which are not present on your keyboard then a radical solution would be creating your own keyboard layout with Ukelele that will map those characters to your physical keys.

The app is only used to create an OSX compliant layout file (XML or bundle) which can then be added via Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources > ＋.

With Ukelele you can clone your existing standard keyboard (File > New from current input source), and remap any of the keys to your liking.

In the default keyboard layout holding the Option key ⌥ in combination with any letter/symbol key will insert extended math characters which normally are never used, e.g. œ∑´®†¥¨ˆøπ“‘«æ…¬˚∆˙©ƒ∂ßåΩ≈ç√∫˜µ≤≥÷¿˘¯Â˜ı◊Dz¸ÅÍÎÏ˝ÓÔÒÚÆ»’”∏؈¨Áˇ‰„„. Holding down Shift+Option will give you yet another set of special characters.

With Ukelele you can remap Option+key and Shift+Option+key to anything you like including Unicode emoji characters.

Here is an example of assigning ⌘ to the Option+c combination:

You can pick the required character for mapping using the built-in Characters app as explained in other answers.

_{Note: If you have a non-US keyboard (i.e. non-ANSI) you might need to set the correct type under View > Keyboard Type > Coding: ISO}

While this might be overkill for a single character, it actually makes sense when you want to tweak other things on your keyboard and have complete control.

Once you have created your custom layout you can use it on any number of macs by simply copying it to ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts and then adding it in Preferences without the need to use any third party apps. The layout can be installed directly from Ukelele via the File > Install option. Once installed you still need to add it manually via Preferences > Keyboard.

_{Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the app author. I simply found the app very useful in solving some issues with my keyboard which had some keys in the 'wrong' place.}

[Answer for people who type Japanese text]

Japanese IMEs are surprisingly good at finding characters.

If you are already routinely typing in Japanese, then the easiest way the get the ⌘ character is to type k o m a n d o, then press tab and return to select the character in the suggestions popup that appears:

That's 9 keystrokes but:

• Much easier to remember than an hexadecimal code (plus you don't need to remember how to enter hexadecimal codes)
• You don't need to install or configure anything that you don't have already.
• You don't need to start any program.
• IMEs spend a lot of effort making sure they are usable absolutely everywhere, so it works in any text field of any program.

If you are using keyboardmaestro simply create a macro in the Global Macro Group (if you want to have the macro available globally) as follows:

1. Create new macro
2. Give the macro a name like "insert ⌘"
3. Add "Typed String Trigger": =cmd
4. Add "New Action" and choose "Insert Text by Pasting"

Now whenever you type the string "=cmd" a "⌘" will be inserted.

For my money, PopChar remains the best character/glyph selector utility for finding, browsing, and pasting characters into text.

It has been a Mac essential since the 90s at least.

https://www.ergonis.com/products/popcharx/

• I remember that! hahaha! old school :) … Nowadays I use amp-what.com or FontGoggles.app here: fontgoggles.org

  – Rowe Morehouse

  Mar 16, 2021 at 14:56

Hit Fn then type "interest".

• This seems the easiest way using Ventura 13.6 in 2023. Also type option to get ⌥. The used symbol then goes into "frequently used" so a press of fn (globe) and click of the mouse takes care of it.

  – Ed Randall

  Oct 27, 2023 at 11:47

If you writing out keyboard shortcuts for Mac users, I'd recommend using the Apple Style Guide (https://help.apple.com/asg/mac/2013/) way of doing this so whatever you write is consistent with other Apple documentation. In this case you would type out Command rather then use the ⌘ symbol. So, for example Paste would be:

Command-V

Alternately you could use Key Graphics.

command+V

The thing is if you are typing it out always use Command.

• 3
  This does not answer the question "What combination of keys do I press to produce the command symbol (⌘) on Mac OS X?"

  – David J.

  Dec 27, 2020 at 23:44

I normally use "SHIFT + ALT + K" to generate a  Symbol.

Instead of using a ⌘ Symbol whenever writing anything which requires keystrokes / shortcuts because for most of the time that I have been using Apple computers it was called the "apple key" . (and the symbol physically written on the key was a  and not a ⌘)

• 1
  This is not a bad workaround! I usually pronounce the key "apple" anyway.

  – owensmartin

  May 14, 2018 at 23:42
• 4
  The Apple symbol will normally only display on Apple devices, as it is not included in standard fonts on other platforms.

  – Tom Gewecke

  May 31, 2018 at 9:09
• On other devices, this shows up as a box with an x through it (kind of like this⌧)

  – McKay

  May 21, 2019 at 23:32
• 2
  This does not answer the question "What combination of keys do I press to produce the command symbol (⌘) on Mac OS X?"

  – David J.

  Dec 27, 2020 at 23:44
• The Apple character doesn't even render correctly on Macs half the time. eg. focus the URL bar in Chrome and type ⇧ + ⌥ + K and see the good old question mark in a diamond.

  – Joel Mellon

  Mar 15, 2021 at 23:46