Need to know the Unicode character code for a specific character? Shapecatcher lets you draw a picture of it and then finds all the Unicode characters that match and tells you their hex codes.
Obviously you can just do a simple Google search to find the Unicode character for anything on your keyboard, but for extended Latin characters, weird currency symbols and things shaped like scissors, this is a very handy (and free) app. It doesn’t currently support Japanese, Korean or Chinese characters, but the developer is working on it.
Lionel
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 1:33 PMCool idea but can’t seem to recognise the non-obvious symbols I try. Could be my bad drawing but tried u with double dot and a with accent and came back with really obscure symbols.
Max
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 3:04 PMIt must be your drawing I guess. I tried it, and the first result was ü, second result was Ü.
Tony
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 1:54 PMTypo in the article title :)
Peter
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 3:23 PMIt got my interrobang at first try. My poor drawing skills meant it had a lot of trouble recognising a snowman, but the suggestions were great! I had no idea Unicode had a smiling face with halo.
Nicholas
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 3:41 PMHah, interrobang was my first try too. It was the second guess it made, so my drawing mustn’t be too bad.