Description
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 5.6+.
- Requires WordPress 5.2+
- Issues and Pull requests welcome in the GitHub repository.
Screenshots
"Special Characters" option in Paragraph Block dropdown menu. 
Initial special characters, showing the "Misc" character set. 
Filtering the special characters via search. 
Resulting inserted special character (note focus on special character, rest of window has been blurred).
Installation
- Install the plugin via the plugin installer, either by searching for it or uploading a .zip file.
- Activate the plugin.
- Use Insert Special Characters!
Reviews
October 7, 2020
THANK YOU! I am a typographer from way back when I was hand-setting (and pieing — the term for spilling) little pieces of metal in the forms of letters, numbers & dingbats. Special Characters is the WordPress feature I have missed most in Gutenberg, and your plugin is the first & only that makes inserting Special Characters easy and enjoyable. Look for a donation from this old type lover! ❤
October 28, 2019
Thank You!
It solves a big problem in Gutenberg, which misses this function!
October 3, 2019
Thank you for this great plugin!
WHY special characters are STILL absent from the Gutenberg WordPress editor -- though it has been requested numerous times -- is quite the annoyance.
This plugin is perfect!
Thanks again!
September 1, 2019
This is perfect for me. Thanks for developing it!If there was an option to move it to the main toolbar without the need to use the dropdown, it would be a six-star product
August 31, 2019
This functionality has been missed and was surprised that it was omitted from Gutenberg. But, these folks did a great job. I loaded it to two sites and then edited posts adding special characters easily. Martin's suggestions about the location of the icon and automatically sorting by most used is on target. I join him in asking for those improvements. Mostly, I want to say thank you!!!
August 31, 2019
This plugin adds a much needed functionality to the Gutenberg editor, and it works fine. To make it perfect for me it should be placed directly in the toolbar (not in a toolbar dropdown) and have a "last used" palette.
Contributors & Developers
“Insert Special Characters” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
“Insert Special Characters” has been translated into 2 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.
Translate “Insert Special Characters” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.3
- Added: Many new special characters (e.g., em dash, en dash, hair space, thin space, no-break space, en space, em space, zero width non-joiner, non-breaking hyphen) and groupings (Currency, Punctuation, Greek).
- Added: Focus style on buttons to improve accessibility for keyboard users (props @samikeijonen).
- Added: WP Acceptance tests (props @johnwatkins0, @jeffpaul).
- Changed: Update to React Character Map
v0.4.2(props @johnwatkins0, @dinhtungdu, @jeffpaul). - Changed: Integrate @wordpress/scripts for building and linting (props @johnwatkins0, @ocean90, @adamsilverstein).
- Changed: Renamed release branch from
mastertotrunk, so please make sure to update and direct references tomasterin downstream code (props @jeffpaul). - Changed: Bump WordPress version “tested up to” 5.8 (props @jeffpaul, @davidchabbi, @pabamato, @ankitguptaindia, @phpbits, @BBerg10up).
- Changed: Documentation updates (props @bobbingwide).
- Fixed: Make UI text in the component translatable (props @johnwatkins0, @dinhtungdu).
- Fixed: Popover initial focus on top instead of bottom or center of the contents (props @phpbits, @BBerg10up).
- Fixed: Compatility with the new widget screen in WordPress 5.8 and formatting of returned elements (props @phpbits).
- Security: Bump
acornfrom 5.7.3 to 5.7.4 (props @dependabot). - Security: Bump
inifrom 1.3.5 to 1.3.7 (props @dependabot). - Security: Bump
ellipticfrom 6.5.2 to 6.5.4 (props @dependabot). - Security: Bump
y18nfrom 4.0.0 to 4.0.1 (props @dependabot). - Security: Bump
rmccue/requestsfrom 1.7.0 to 1.8.0 (props @dependabot). - Security: Bump
ssrifrom 6.0.1 to 6.0.2 (props @dependabot). - Security: Bump
lodashfrom 4.17.15 to 4.17.21 (props @dependabot). - Security: Bump
browserslistfrom 4.8.7 to 4.16.6 (props @dependabot). - Security: Bump
path-parsefrom 1.0.6 to 1.0.7 (props @dependabot).
1.0.2
- Changed: Relicensed from MIT to GPLv2.
- Fixed: Hook on
enqueue_block_editor_assetsso script is only enqueued in editor (props @adamsilverstein, @josch87). - Fixed: Register text domain to ensure translations can be loaded (props @ocean90).
- Fixed: Bump WordPress version “tested up to” 5.3 (props @adamsilverstein).
- Fixed: Documentation and credits (props @jeffpaul).
1.0.1
- Added: Documentation for keyboard shortcut (props @mrwweb, @jeffpaul).
- Fixed: Ensure character map appears as expected in Firefox (props @adamsilverstein).
1.0.0
- Added: Initial plugin release 🎉.
- Added: Wrap React Character Map in a Gutenberg Popover (props @adamsilverstein).
- Added: Plugin header and icon images (props @dillonmccallum).