Unicode representations of modifier keysEdit

In the process of preparing a personalized "cheat sheet" for TextMate I wanted to include graphical representations of the different modifier keys (Command, Shift, Control etc). It is possible to find and view these from the Mac OS X character palette but the huge size of the Unicode space can make this difficult unless you store such characters in your favorites list.

I’m recordings some of the useful codes here to save me the hassle of looking them up again in the future:

  • ⎋ (escape): U+238B
  • ⇥ (tab): U+21E5
  • ⇪ (caps lock): U+21EA
  • ⇧ (shift): U+21E7
  • ⌃ (control): U+2303
  • ⌥ (option): U+2325
  •  (Apple): U+F8FF (in some Apple-provided fonts only)
  • ⌘ (command): U+2318
  • ␣ (space): U+2423
  • ⏎ (return): U+23CE
  • ⌫ (backspace): U+232B
  • ⌦ (delete): U+2326
  • ⇱ (home): U+21F1
  • ⇲ (end): U+21F2
  • ⇞ (page up): U+21DE
  • ⇟ (page down): U+21DF
  • ↑ (up arrow): U+2191
  • ⇡ (up arrow): U+21E1 (dotted form)
  • ↓ (down arrow): U+2193
  • ⇣ (down arrow): U+21E3 (dotted form)
  • ← (left arrow): U+2190
  • ⇠ (left arrow): U+21E0 (dotted form)
  • → (right arrow): U+2192
  • ⇢ (right arrow): U+21E2 (dotted form)
  • ⌧ (clear): U+2327
  • ⇭ (num lock): U+21ED
  • ⌤ (enter): U+2324
  • ⏏ (eject): U+23CF
  • ⌽ (power): U+233D

Of the arrow forms I prefer the dotted forms because that is how they appear on my current Apple keyboard.

To include these Unicode characters in the HTML of this page I converted the numbers from hexadecimal to decimal as in this example:

  1. Get Unicode for the escape key: U+238B
  2. Convert 238B hex to 9099 decimal; you can use a tool like WinHex to do this.
  3. Include in document as an HTML entity: ⎋

See also