How to type { on a Belgian keyboard

⌥ Option+(

Hold Option and press “(”.

Not your keyboard? You are viewing: Belgian
Hold Option and press “(”.escF1F2F3F4F5F6F7F8F9F10F11F12@#&1é2"3'4(5§6è7!8ç9à0)°-_⌫⇥AZERTYUIOP^¨$*↩⇪QSDFGHJKLMù%`£⇧<>WXCVBN,?;.:/=+⇧fn⌃⌥⌘⌘⌥◀▲▼▶

Try it on your keyboard: the keys you press light up.

What is the left curly brace for?

The left curly brace { opens a block in most programming languages: C, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Rust or Go. It always comes with its closing partner, Right curly brace }.

if (total > 0) {
  console.log(total);
}

You will also find it:

  • in JSON objects: {"name": "Jane"};
  • in CSS rules: a { color: inherit; };
  • in templates (Twig, Handlebars, Vue): {{ title }};
  • in mathematics, to write a set: {1, 2, 3}.

Pitfalls

  • Do not mix up braces { }, brackets [ ] and parentheses ( ): one slip is a syntax error. On this layout, square brackets are typed like this: ⌥ Option+⇧ Shift+(.
  • On other layouts the brace is somewhere else entirely, for example ⌥ Option+( on French – Numerical. If your shortcuts “stop working”, check the active input source in the menu bar.
  • In a code editor, the brace may close itself: the editor adds }, not the keyboard.

{ on each layout

SystemLayoutKey combination
macOS French – Numerical ⌥ Option+(
macOS French ⌥ Option+(
macOS Belgian ⌥ Option+(
macOS Swiss French ⌥ Option+8
macOS Canadian Multilingual (CSA) ⌥ Option+7
macOS Canadian French ⇧ Shift+[
macOS Spanish ⌥ Option+´
macOS Latin American {
macOS U.S. ⇧ Shift+[
macOS ABC ⇧ Shift+[
macOS U.S. International – PC ⇧ Shift+[

Other methods

Character Viewer

Press fn + E (or Control + Command + Space) to open the Character Viewer, search for “{” by name, then double-click it to insert it.

Text replacement

In System Settings › Keyboard › Text Replacements, map a shortcut (for example “;;x”) to the character {: it will be inserted automatically in most apps.

{ technical details

Unicode code pointU+007B
Official Unicode nameLEFT CURLY BRACKET
HTML entity&#123;
CSScontent: "\7B";
JavaScript / JSON"\u007B"
UTF-8 bytes7B
URL encoding%7B

The official name comes from the Unicode Character Database (ICU).

Related characters

Practice on this layout

Report a mistake

The combination does not work for you? Tell us what happens (macOS version, keyboard, what appears).