Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. Ever have that issue where you’re looking for an unusual or ...

Character entry? Isn’t that what we used to call “typing”? Yes, but how can you type characters that aren’t printed on your keyboard, or aren’t available at all through any key combination? There is ...

Whether you prefer to use a Mac or a Windows PC, you might think you know all your computer’s secrets. After all, you use it every day, and modern technology is supposed to be so intuitive that you ...

The keyboard viewer in OS X has been serving as a useful tool for a long time, allowing users to view keyboard characters with a few clicks of their mouse. Though Apple continues to include the ...

Here’s the situation: you’re typing a report for work, and you suddenly have to write the phrase “Jones née Berkowitz.” Or you are adding a phrase in Spanish and need to use the word “años.” How do ...

If you ever find yourself needing characters or symbols that aren’t on your keyboard, Windows has an easy fix: “Character Map.”A character map of all special symbols (including foreign language ...

The Emoji++ keyboard bills itself at the fastest way to type emoji on iOS. It achieves that by allowing you to scroll through your emoji list as a single collection rather than relying on swiping ...

Your Windows mobile device doesn't have a numeric keypad, so how do you type characters like em dashes or bullets without having to open Word or Character Map? I'd been using Macs exclusively since ...

Back in the day, obtaining a working knowledge of iPhone tips and tricks was something that was reserved for tech-minded nerds who had no qualms about eagerly reading books or websites on the topic.

On the information superhighway, some keyboard characters such as carets, ellipses and asterisks symbolize direction and help you navigate the Internet. Even in computer file systems such as folders ...