How to show special characters on Apple App Store product description?

Question

I see with some apps like Toodledo they use checkmarks for their revision history. How can you show/use special characters in an App Store product description? Does it allow HTML or do you just have to use ascii character codes?

Any tips/tricks for better presentation of our app's product information?

Thank you.

Solution 1

Simply enter the characters using the character table in OS X.

To show it, go to OS X System Preferences -> International and select "Show Input Sources in Menu Bar". You should get a flag symbol next to the clock in the menu bar. Clicking on it results in a menu where you can open the character table, in which you can select and paste pretty much any character.

Solution 2

I think Apple just made the rule stricter on the App Store. I have been using special characters in my metadatas for a very long time but got a bad surprise today when trying to submit a new version:

Got this error message on iTunes Connect:

What's New In This Version must not contain the following characters: ★, ❤

Solution 3

I am the author of the Toodledo app. Here is how I did it. I found the character I wanted on the internet by searching for "unicode symbols". I found it on wikipedia

I then copy and pasted the checkmark ✓ into my app description. And every time I need to make a new checkmark, I go and copy and paste it again since I don't know how to type it. There are lots of interesting symbols to choose from. I also use a star★

Comments

[lef]

Update (Apr 2013)e: it seems, that Apple has put restrictions on usage of special characters. You can no more use 'star', 'finger' etc.

[jaySF]

In OSX Lion it is slightly different ... goto System Preferences -> Language & Text and select the "Input Sources" table. Check off "Show Input menu in menu bar". You'll have a new menu icon in the top menu bar. Clicking it provides 2 options "Show Character Viewer" and "Show Keyboard Viewer" - click the later and you get the Character viewer you need.

[Dev]

In OS X Mountain Lion is different again: go to Preferences > Keyboard and check "Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar". Click on the new icon in the menu bar and select "Show Character Viewer".

[Joris Weimar]

i've noticed the star doesn't seem to work on the actual device. it lists the unicode &#... instead of the symbol

[Jake]

Apple has removed the ability to use special characters in app descriptions :(

[Joney Spark]

Why not use the Character Viewer built into OS X? System Prefs, Keyboard: Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar. From the menubar you click the helper icon and Show character viewer. Now pick all the characters you desire..

[Basil Bourque]

@Gatada The Show Character Viewer feature is nice. Think of UnicodeChecker as a heavy-duty version of that Viewer. UnicodeChecker provides those features and more. More information: those four tabs in screen shot display all of the data from the official Unicode database. Easier to find characters by number. That popup menu in upper-right corner displays a list of fonts containing a glyph for that character. See the decomposition (sequence of characters separating out main character from diacriticals as is done in "normalized" text).

[jengelsma]

To enter Emoji characters on OS X Mavericks simply hold Command-Control-Space whenever you are in a text field and an Emoji panel will appear.