~ on every keyboard
| System | Layout | Key combination |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | French – Numerical | ⌥ Option+NthenSpace Dead key |
| macOS | French | ⌥ Option+NthenSpace Dead key |
| macOS | Belgian | ⌥ Option+NthenSpace Dead key |
| macOS | Swiss French | ⌥ Option+NthenSpace Dead key |
| macOS | Canadian Multilingual (CSA) | ⌥ Option+Ç |
| macOS | Canadian French | ⇧ Shift+` |
| macOS | Spanish | ⌥ Option+ÑthenSpace Dead key |
| macOS | Latin American | ⌥ Option+Ñ |
| macOS | U.S. | ⇧ Shift+` |
| macOS | ABC | ⇧ Shift+` |
| macOS | U.S. International – PC | ⇧ Shift+`thenSpace Dead key |
What is the tilde for?
The tilde ~ has several uses:
- home folder in the macOS and Linux terminal:
cd ~/Documents; - approximately: “~20 minutes” means “about 20 minutes”;
- bitwise NOT in C, JavaScript and Python:
~x; - version ranges in package managers:
~1.4; - in Spanish and Portuguese, it is the accent on ñ, ã or õ.
Pitfalls
- On many Mac layouts the tilde is a dead key: nothing appears on the first press, because it waits for the next letter to make ñ or õ. To get the tilde on its own, finish with Space, as the animation shows.
- The small tilde ˜ (U+02DC) looks similar but the terminal does not understand it. If
cd ~fails after copy-pasting, check the character. - On this layout: ⇧ Shift+`. On French – Numerical: ⌥ Option+NthenSpace.
~ technical details
| Unicode code point | U+007E |
|---|---|
| Official Unicode name | TILDE |
| HTML entity | ~ |
| CSS | content: "\7E"; |
| JavaScript / JSON | "\u007E" |
| UTF-8 bytes | 7E |
| URL encoding | ~ |
The official name comes from the Unicode Character Database (ICU).