Insert Special Characters

Ever wanted to add a special character while working within the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg) and suddenly find yourself longing for the days of the Classic Editor and the Special Character inserter? Well long no more, the Insert Special Characters plugin is here to ease your publishing woes!

Note: you can display the popover via the ctrl/cmd + o keyboard shortcut.

Development takes place in the GitHub repository.

Technical Notes

• Requires PHP 7.4+.
• Requires WordPress 6.6+
• Issues and Pull requests welcome in the GitHub repository.

Extending

To control the available tabs and characters, developers can filter the data set using the insertspecialcharacters-characters JavaScript (wp.hooks) filter.

For example, to create a character inserter that only provides currency symbols:

wp.hooks.addFilter(
    'insertspecialcharacters-characters',  // The filter name.
    'mycallback', // Our callback namespace.
    function( component ) { // The callback function.

        // Return the categories/characters to display.
        // The data structure is: { category: [ character data ], category2: ... }
        return {
            "Currency": [
                { "entity": "$", "hex": "", "name": "Dollar Sign", "char": "$" },
                { "entity": "€", "hex": "AC;", "name": "Euro Sign", "char": "€" },
                { "entity": "¢", "hex": "�A2;", "name": "Cent Sign", "char": "¢" },
                { "entity": "£", "hex": "�A3;", "name": "Pound Sign", "char": "£" },
                { "entity": "¥", "hex": "�A5;", "name": "Yen Sign", "char": "¥" },
            ]
        };
    }
);

1. Install the plugin via the plugin installer, either by searching for it or uploading a .zip file.
2. Activate the plugin.
3. Use Insert Special Characters!

1. 

   Example of special characters selection in the Block Editor.

2. 

   "Special Characters" option in Paragraph Block menu.

3. 

   Initial special characters, showing the "Math" character set.

4. 

   Filtering the special characters via search.

5. 

   Resulting inserted special character (note focus on special character, rest of window has been blurred).

1.1.3 – 2024-11-18

• Changed: Update the UI to be more consistent with WordPress core props (@psorensen, @fabiankaegy via #263).
• Changed: Clean up NPM dependencies and update node to v20 (props @Sidsector9, @dkotter via #238).
• Changed: Bump WordPress “tested up to” version 6.7 (props @sudip-md, @sonali886, @godleman, @jeffpaul, @dkotter via #260, #261, #273, #274).
• Security: Bump express from 4.18.2 to 4.19.2, follow-redirects from 1.15.5 to 1.15.6, ip from 1.1.8 to 1.1.9 and webpack-dev-middleware from 5.3.3 to 5.3.4 (props @dependabot, @iamdharmesh via #254).
• Security: Bump braces from 3.0.2 to 3.0.3, pac-resolver from 7.0.0 to 7.0.1, socks from 2.7.1 to 2.8.3, ws from 7.59 to 7.5.10 and removes ip (props @dependabot, @faisal-alvi via #259).
• Security: Bump axios from 1.6.7 to 1.7.7, body-parser from 1.20.2 to 1.20.3, express from 4.19.2 to 4.21.0, ws from 7.5.10 to 8.18.0, @wordpress/scripts from 27.1.0 to 29.0.0 and webpack from 5.90.0 to 5.94.0 (props @dependabot, @Sidsector9 via #267, #268).

1.1.2 – 2024-01-08

• Added: Support for the WordPress.org plugin preview (props @dkotter, @jeffpaul via #232).
• Fixed: Issue with blocks crashing due to faux caret (props @Sidsector9, @dkotter, @ankitguptaindia via #225).
• Fixed: Issue with characters added to the beginning trimming text from the end (props @Sidsector9, @dkotter, @ankitguptaindia via #225).
• Changed: Bump WordPress “tested up to” version to 6.4 (props @qasumitbagthariya, @jeffpaul, @QAharshalkadu, @ankitguptaindia, @dhanendran, @iamdharmesh via #228).

1.1.1 – 2023-10-17

• Fixed: Address an issue where some blocks would crash due to a missing attribute (props @dkotter via #221).
• Security: Bump @babel/traverse from 7.20.5 to 7.23.2 (props @dependabot, @dkotter via #219).

1.1.0 – 2023-10-16

• Added: Show a faux cursor to preserve context (props @Sidsector9, @helen, @ravinderk via #207).
• Added: Check for minimum required PHP version before loading the plugin (props @kmgalanakis, @peterwilsoncc via #210).
• Changed: Bump WordPress “tested up to” version to 6.3 (props @kmgalanakis, @jeffpaul, @peterwilsoncc via #212, #215).
• Fixed: Ensure that when highlighting a special character, the block doesn’t crash (props @jrmd, @dkotter via #204).
• Security: Bump semver from 5.7.1 to 5.7.2 (props @dependabot, @dkotter via #202).
• Security: Bump word-wrap from 1.2.3 to 1.2.4 (props @dependabot, @Sidsector9 via #206).
• Security: Bump @cypress/request from 2.88.10 to 3.0.0, cypress from 12.8.1 to 13.3.1 and @10up/cypress-wp-utils from 0.1.0 to 0.2.0 (props @dependabot, @dkotter via #213).
• Security: Bump tough-cookie from 4.1.2 to 4.1.3 and @cypress/request from 2.88.10 to 2.88.12 (props @dependabot, @ravinderk via #214).
• Security: Bump postcss from 8.4.20 to 8.4.31 (props @dependabot, @faisal-alvi via #216).

Further changelog entries can be found in the CHANGELOG.md file.