How to Type the Euro Symbol on Mac (€)

The euro sign hides on a different key depending on where your keyboard thinks it lives. On a US layout it's Option+Shift+2; on a British one, Option+2; on most European layouts it's printed right on the keycap. Here's the combo for every common layout, how to check yours in ten seconds, and the fallbacks that always work.

The combo, by keyboard layout

• US, US International, ABC, Canadian English: Option+Shift+2
• British / Irish: Option+2 — the two layouts swap the euro and trademark: on US boards Option+2 is ™, on British it's €.
• German: Option+E — mnemonic and printed on many keycaps.
• French (AZERTY): Option+$ — the dollar key, fittingly.
• Spanish, Italian, and most euro-zone layouts: look at your keycaps — € is usually engraved on the E, 5, or another key, reached with Option (or typed directly on some layouts).

Whichever combo your layout uses, it works identically across macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia, in every app — these are plain characters, not formatting.

Check your layout in ten seconds

Not sure which layout you're running? Click the input menu in the menu bar (the flag or "ABC" icon) — the active layout is checked. No input menu? Enable it under System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → Edit… → Show Input menu in menu bar. Then, to see where € lives, choose Show Keyboard Viewer from the same menu and hold Option (then Option+Shift): every hidden symbol lights up on the on-screen keys, € included. This trick answers the question permanently for any symbol on any layout.

Fallbacks that work on every layout

• Character Viewer: press Ctrl+Cmd+Space, type "euro", double-click €. While you're there, the currency category holds ¥, ₹, £, ₩, ₽, and every other sign — this is the universal route for currencies your keyboard ignores.
• Text replacement: for daily use, make a snippet — System Settings → Keyboard → Text Replacements…, click +, and map ;eur (or eurr, any trigger you won't type accidentally) to €. It expands as you type and syncs to your iPhone and iPad via iCloud.
• Copy once, paste forever: inelegant, undefeated.

If € shows up as a box or gibberish

Typing the symbol is half the job; surviving transit is the other half. The euro sign is standard Unicode (U+20AC) and renders on every modern system, but two legacy traps remain: very old documents saved in pre-Unicode encodings can turn € into "€" or a question mark when reopened, and a few decorative fonts simply lack the glyph, showing an empty box. The fixes are simple — re-save the document as UTF-8 (TextEdit and every modern editor default to it), or switch to any system font. Freshly typed on macOS 13–15, the character is always the real thing.

Typing prices properly

Convention differs by audience: English-language usage puts the symbol before the amount with no space (€49.99), while many European countries write the amount first (49,99 €) with a comma decimal. There's no wrong key on the Mac side — type whichever your readers expect. And if you handle multiple currencies in spreadsheets, remember Numbers and Excel apply currency formatting to plain numbers; you rarely need to type the symbol at all — set the cell format once and enter digits.

One last note for external-keyboard users: the combo follows the input source, not the physical keyboard. A US-layout mechanical keyboard attached to a Mac set to British input uses the British combo (Option+2), regardless of what's printed on the keys — another case where ten seconds with the Keyboard Viewer settles it.