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I frequently find myself googling "micro sign" when I need to type the micro sign μ.

Is there an easier way? How can I type this sign using my keyboard?

I am on macOS Monterey using the ABC Extended keyboard (in English).

Allan
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Paul Razvan Berg
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    Is there any particular reason you're using ABC Extended rather than any 'normal' English? [If it's because you need specific characters, let us know which characters & maybe we can find them on a 'regular' English too] µ is Opt/m on most English layouts, but isn't available at all on ABC. – Tetsujin Dec 19 '21 at 10:49
  • Pic of ABC with Opt pressed - https://i.stack.imgur.com/FTeej.png Pic of British English with Opt pressed - https://i.stack.imgur.com/pVp0r.png – Tetsujin Dec 19 '21 at 11:39
  • @Tetsujin I've deleted my comment, as it seemed to work briefly when on ABC Extended, but then I deleted ABC Extended from my input sources and re-added it, and no longer works... However ABC (not extended) does support Opt/m combination – AVelj Dec 19 '21 at 11:40
  • Yes, ABC is almost a simple 'international' English [British with swaps for pound, cents & Euro to be more like US English]. Extended gets happy with dead keys. They're not really similar. [I ought to have made that distinction at the end of my first comment, but too late now] – Tetsujin Dec 19 '21 at 11:44
  • In regards to how you can easily do it, you could enable ABC (not Extended) keyboard layout in System Preferences, and then temporarily switch to it using Control+Space command to shuffle through your keyboard input sources and then press Option+m to obtain the μ (mu) character ... Or alternatively you can make your own text replacements in System Preferences>Keyboard>Text. Since I use LaTeX in my mathematics studies, I just use their convention, so I set μ to automatically replace \mu whenever I type that combination of characters – AVelj Dec 19 '21 at 11:48
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    @Tetsujin no, I think that's what the OS came with when I bought my MacBook. I'll switch to normal English. – Paul Razvan Berg Dec 19 '21 at 13:45

1 Answers1

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Pressing ⌥ OptionM when using the ABC keyboard layout (which is equivalent to the US keyboard layout) should print µ.

Additional info

You can also use the Unicode Hex Input keyboard layout1 and type O3BC (which is the hex code for µ) while holding the ⌥ Option key to write µ.

Note: You can also type 00B5 while holding ⌥ Option to write µ (see Character encodings - Wikipedia).

1Basically, the Unicode Hex Input keyboard layout allows you to enter any character by typing its hex code while holding the ⌥ Option key. It could be added in System Settings > Keyboard > Text Inputs (on Ventura).

Thinkr
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