Degree Symbol: How to Type ° on Keyboard, Mac, iPhone, Word, LaTeX

The degree symbol (°) is one of the most-needed special characters that has no key of its own. You need it for temperatures (25 °C, 77 °F), for angles (a 90° corner, a 45° cut), and for latitude and longitude, yet every operating system hides it behind a different shortcut. This guide collects all of them in one place: Windows alt codes, the Mac shortcut, iPhone and Android, Word, Google Docs, Excel, HTML, and LaTeX, plus the two lookalike characters you should avoid and a block you can copy and paste.

Degree Sign Copy and Paste

If you just need the symbol right now, copy it from here:

```
°
°C
°F
```

The character is the DEGREE SIGN, Unicode U+00B0.

The Degree Symbol Explained

The degree sign is a small raised circle. It originated in the sexagesimal (base-60) notation inherited from Babylonian astronomy, where a circle was divided into 360 degrees, each degree into 60 minutes (′), and each minute into 60 seconds (″). The same mark was later adopted for temperature scales.

What the degree symbol measures:

• Angles — 360° in a full circle, 90° in a right angle, 180° in a straight line
• Temperature — degrees Celsius (°C) and degrees Fahrenheit (°F)
• Geographic coordinates — 48.8566° N, 2.3522° E for Paris
• Alcohol, hardness, and other scales — degrees proof, degrees Brix, degrees of water hardness

How to Type the Degree Symbol on Windows

Alt code (any program): Hold the Alt key and type 0176 on the numeric keypad, then release Alt. The older code Alt + 248 produces the same ° character. Both require Num Lock to be on and use the number pad, not the row of digits above the letters.

Laptops without a number pad: Many laptops have a hidden keypad on the J, K, L, U, I, O keys activated with Fn. Hold Fn + Alt and type the code on those keys. If that does not work, press Windows key + period to open the emoji panel, switch to the Symbols tab, and search for "degree."

Character Map: Open the Start menu, type "Character Map," find ° in the Latin-1 section, and click Copy.

How to Type the Degree Symbol on Mac

Press Option + Shift + 8. This works in every Mac application and produces the correct DEGREE SIGN (U+00B0).

Two neighboring shortcuts produce lookalikes, so be careful:

• Option + K gives ˚ (RING ABOVE, U+02DA), a diacritic used in letters like Å
• Option + 0 gives º (MASCULINE ORDINAL INDICATOR, U+00BA), used in Spanish and Portuguese ordinals like 1º

Both look similar in some fonts, but they are different characters. Use Option + Shift + 8.

How to Type the Degree Symbol on iPhone and Android

iPhone and iPad: Tap the 123 key to switch to the number keyboard, then press and hold the 0 key. A small popup appears with the ° symbol; slide your finger onto it and release. This works in Messages, Notes, Safari, and any app that uses the standard keyboard.

Android (Gboard and most keyboards): Tap ?123, then press and hold 0 to reveal °. On Gboard it also appears on the second symbols page (tap =\<).

Degree Symbol in Microsoft Word

Word offers several routes:

1. Keyboard shortcut: Press Ctrl + Shift + @ (that is, Ctrl + Shift + 2), release, and then press the spacebar. Word inserts °.
2. Alt + X: Type 00B0 immediately followed by Alt + X, which converts the hex code into the symbol.
3. Insert menu: Go to Insert > Symbol > More Symbols, choose the Latin-1 Supplement subset, and double-click °.
4. Alt code: Alt + 0176 on the numeric keypad works in Word as it does everywhere else on Windows.

For frequent use, add an AutoCorrect entry (File > Options > Proofing > AutoCorrect Options) that replaces a short string such as (deg) with °.

Degree Symbol in Google Docs

• Go to Insert > Special characters, type "degree" in the search box, and click °.
• On a Mac, Option + Shift + 8 works directly; on Windows, Alt + 0176 works directly.
• On a Chromebook, press Ctrl + Shift + U, type b0, and press Enter or space.

Google Docs also supports Tools > Preferences > Substitutions, where you can map a shortcut like ^o to °.

Degree Symbol in Excel and Google Sheets

Use a formula to generate the character:

• =CHAR(176) produces ° in Excel for Windows
• =UNICHAR(176) produces ° in Excel 2013 and later on any platform, and in Google Sheets

To display temperatures without changing the underlying numbers, apply a custom number format such as 0.0 "°C" or 0 "°F". The cell then shows 21.5 °C while still containing the plain number 21.5, so your formulas keep working.

Degree Symbol in HTML, CSS, and Unicode

Unicode also defines the single characters ℃ (U+2103, DEGREE CELSIUS) and ℉ (U+2109, DEGREE FAHRENHEIT). They are compatibility characters that exist for legacy East Asian encodings; the Unicode standard recommends writing °C as two characters instead.

Degree Symbol in LaTeX

LaTeX gives you several options depending on context:

• Text mode: \textdegree prints ° (from textcomp, loaded automatically in LaTeX since 2020)
• Math mode: ^\circ or ^{\circ} places a small ring as a superscript, as in $45^\circ$
• gensymb package: \degree and \celsius work in both text and math mode
• siunitx package: the most robust choice for units and angles

```latex
\usepackage{siunitx}
\qty{25}{\degreeCelsius} % 25 °C (siunitx v3)
\SI{25}{\celsius} % 25 °C (siunitx v2 syntax)
\ang{45} % 45°
\ang{48;51;24} % 48°51'24" (degrees, minutes, seconds)
```

The siunitx package also handles the spacing rules automatically: a thin space between the number and °C, but no space before a bare ° for an angle.

Spacing: 25 °C or 25°C?

The SI brochure specifies a space between a number and a unit symbol, and °C is a unit symbol, so the strictly correct form is 25 °C. Plane angles are the exception: write 45° with no space. Many publishers and style guides accept 25°C in everyday text, but scientific journals generally enforce the space. Note that kelvin takes no degree sign at all: 298 K, never 298 °K.

Celsius, Fahrenheit, and Angles

The same ° symbol serves three different scales, so context carries the meaning:

• Celsius: water freezes at 0 °C and boils at 100 °C at sea level
• Fahrenheit: water freezes at 32 °F and boils at 212 °F; °F = °C × 9/5 + 32
• Angles: 1° = π/180 radians ≈ 0.01745 rad; 1° = 60′ = 3,600″

Lookalike Characters to Avoid

Several characters resemble the degree sign and are easy to insert by accident:

The wrong characters may look passable on screen but break search, sort incorrectly, render oddly in other fonts, and fail accessibility checks. On a Mac, Option + Shift + 8 is correct and Option + K and Option + 0 are not.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the alt code for the degree symbol? Alt + 0176 (or Alt + 248) on the numeric keypad with Num Lock on.

How do I type the degree symbol on a Mac? Option + Shift + 8.

How do I type the degree symbol on an iPhone? Switch to the 123 keyboard and long-press the 0 key.

What is the degree symbol in HTML? ° or °.

What is the degree symbol in LaTeX? \textdegree in text, ^\circ in math, or \ang{45} and \qty{25}{\degreeCelsius} with siunitx.

Writing Technical Documents with Symbols

Temperatures, angles, and coordinates appear constantly in lab reports, engineering drawings, and scientific papers, and using the real degree sign with correct spacing keeps those documents consistent and searchable.

Octree is an AI-powered LaTeX editor that handles units and symbols for you, so you can type "25 degrees Celsius" and get properly typeset output.

Create professional documents at https://useoctree.com