Special characters

The special characters feature lets you insert mathematical operators, currency symbols, punctuation, graphic symbols (such as arrows or bullets), or Unicode letters typically not accessible from the keyboard (such as umlauts or other diacritics). The feature also supports emojis.

Use the special characters toolbar button in the editor below to open a configurable panel with a table of selectable special characters.

After installing the editor, add the feature to your plugin list and toolbar configuration:

// Core plugin provides the API for the management of special characters and their categories.
// The other provide a basic set of special characters.
import { ClassicEditor, SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials } from 'ckeditor5';

ClassicEditor
	.create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
		licenseKey: '<YOUR_LICENSE_KEY>', // Or 'GPL'.
		plugins: [ SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials, /* ... */ ],
		toolbar: [ 'specialCharacters', /* ... */ ],
		specialCharacters: {
			// Configuration.
		}
	} )
	.then( /* ... */ )
	.catch( /* ... */ );

// Core plugin provides the API for the management of special characters and their categories.
// The other provide a basic set of special characters.
const { ClassicEditor, SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials } = CKEDITOR;

ClassicEditor
	.create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
		licenseKey: '<YOUR_LICENSE_KEY>',
		plugins: [ SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials, /* ... */ ],
		toolbar: [ 'specialCharacters', /* ... */ ],
		specialCharacters: {
			// Configuration.
		}
	} )
	.then( /* ... */ )
	.catch( /* ... */ );

By default, a few categories of special characters have been defined. You can easily customize the special characters available in your WYSIWYG editor installation by adding new categories, extending the existing ones, or removing them altogether.

You can define a new special characters category using the SpecialCharacters#addItems() function.

For example, the following plugin adds the “Emoji” category to the special characters dropdown.

function SpecialCharactersEmoji( editor ) {
    editor.plugins.get( 'SpecialCharacters' ).addItems( 'Emoji', [
        { title: 'smiley face', character: '😊' },
        { title: 'rocket', character: '🚀' },
        { title: 'wind blowing face', character: '🌬️' },
        { title: 'floppy disk', character: '💾' },
        { title: 'heart', character: '❤️' }
    ], { label: 'Emoticons' } );
}

ClassicEditor
    .create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
        // ... Other configuration options ...
        plugins: [
            SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials, SpecialCharactersEmoji,
        ],
    } )
    .then( /* ... */ )
    .catch( /* ... */ );

After adding the above plugin to the editor configuration, the new category will become available in the special characters dropdown.

Below you can see a demo based on the example shown above. Use the special characters toolbar button and then select “Emoticons” from the dropdown. This will let you insert an emoji into the content.

By using the SpecialCharacters#addItems() function you can also add new special characters to an existing category.

function SpecialCharactersExtended( editor ) {
    editor.plugins.get( 'SpecialCharacters' ).addItems( 'Mathematical', [
        { title: 'alpha', character: 'α' },
        { title: 'beta', character: 'β' },
        { title: 'gamma', character: 'γ' }
    ] );
}

ClassicEditor
    .create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
        // ... Other configuration options ...
        plugins: [
            SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials, SpecialCharactersExtended,
        ],
    } )
    .then( /* ... */ )
    .catch( /* ... */ );

Below you can see a demo based on the example shown above. Use the special characters toolbar button and then select “Mathematical” from the dropdown. You will see that the category now contains the additional Greek letters introduced by the configuration above.

The special characters feature exposes each category as a separate plugin. While the SpecialCharactersEssentials plugin can be used to conveniently include all of them, you can customize the category list by adding individual plugins with particular categories.

By default, the @ckeditor/ckeditor5-special-characters package provides special characters grouped into the following categories:

• SpecialCharactersArrows – Arrows special characters.
• SpecialCharactersCurrency – Currency special characters.
• SpecialCharactersLatin – Latin special characters.
• SpecialCharactersMathematical – Mathematical special characters.
• SpecialCharactersText – Text special characters.
• SpecialCharactersEssentials – Combines the plugins listed above.

For example, you can limit the categories to “Mathematical” and “Currency” only by picking the SpecialCharactersMathematical and SpecialCharactersCurrency plugins, like so:

import { ClassicEditor, SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersCurrency, SpecialCharactersMathematical } from 'ckeditor5';

ClassicEditor
	.create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
		// ... Other configuration options ...
		plugins: [
			SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersCurrency, SpecialCharactersMathematical,
		],
	} )
	.then( /* ... */ )
	.catch( /* ... */ );

const { ClassicEditor, SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersCurrency, SpecialCharactersMathematical } = CKEDITOR;

ClassicEditor
	.create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
		// ... Other configuration options ...
		plugins: [
			SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersCurrency, SpecialCharactersMathematical,
		],
	} )
	.then( /* ... */ )
	.catch( /* ... */ );

Below you can see a demo based on the example shown above. After clicking the special characters toolbar button , you can see that it contains fewer categories compared to the other editors on this page.

The order of categories in the UI is determined by the order in which they were registered. However, depending on the context in which you use the editor, you might want to change this order, to make it easier to access frequently used characters.

The categories order can be customized using the order array.

ClassicEditor
    .create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
        // ... Other configuration options ...
        plugins: [ SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials, ... ],
        specialCharacters: {
            order: [
                'Text',
                'Latin',
                'Mathematical',
                'Currency',
                'Arrows'
            ]
        }
    } )
    .then( /* ... */ )
    .catch( /* ... */ );

The SpecialCharacters plugin registers the UI button component ('specialCharacters').

The source code of the feature is available at GitHub in https://github.com/ckeditor/ckeditor5/tree/master/packages/ckeditor5-special-characters.