How can I insert symbols on iPad or iPhone?

Solution 1:

For many symbols or characters with diacritics (e.g. accents) you can press and hold a related key to insert variations.

• º - For the degree symbol, press and hold the 0 button (on the mac you can press Option+0[zero, not letter o])

• © - For the copyright symbol, on the mac the shortcut is Option+g. Unfortunately pressing and holding g on the iPhone/iPad doesn't provide an option for the copyright symbol.

As an alternative, you can use glyphboard, or copy and paste the symbols from a note, email that you create on your computer.

Solution 2:

The above answers are all correct. However, in iOS 5 there’s a new way of quickly inputting special characters.

Simply go to Settings → General → Keyboard → Shortcuts, and tap the + button to add a new keyboard shortcut.

Basically, this is the same functionality that OS X’s System Preferences → Language & Text → Text → Symbol and text substitution offers.

So, get any symbol you want as described in the other answers, copy it, then add it as a new keyboard shortcut this way.

To give you some inspiration, here’s a screenshot of (part of) my text substitutions:

Solution 3:

1. Go to Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> International Keyboards.
2. Activate the Japanese keyboard (whether you speak Japanese or not).
3. Open a text box in Messages, Mail, or Safari (or whatever).
4. Hit the globe button until it switches to Japanese (Kana not Qwerty) keyboard.
5. On the left hand side hit the second button from the bottom that says "ABC" until it switches to "*123".
6. Your keyboard should now have symbols on it.