Accessing the Hidden Special Characters on iPhone Here is how you can type special characters on your iPhone or your Mac. You might think that if you’ve chosen a particular language for your keyboard, you can’t access those special characters easily. These can include accented letters, special characters like the degree symbol, and more. There are actually many more characters that you may want to be able to type. Whether it’s a physical or digital keyboard, you’re limited to a certain number of character options.