I've seen this answer, but on my Italian keyboard I've got < between Z and Left Shift instead of the ~. So, how can I type it?

  • Is there anything wrong with fn + n? – Gerry Aug 16 '12 at 14:06
  • @Gerry it's not the same tilde – Nicola Peluchetti Aug 16 '12 at 14:07
  • 1
    try option and 5 – David DelMonte Aug 16 '12 at 14:14
  • Despite a keyboard combination, if you don't want to use it by its own, you could still use the Character picker. Just press and hold the N, for instance, and a pop-Up will show, giving you the option of choosing the Ñ letter. – Thecafremo Aug 16 '12 at 14:22
  • @Thecafremo But he doesn't want Ñ, he wants ~, and Character Picker is useless for doing that. – Tom Gewecke Feb 10 '16 at 16:01

Option ⌥ + 5

You can show the keyboard viewer from the input menu if it's enabled.


With the italian keyboard you can use alt + 5


Alt Ñ on Spanish keyboard. Hope this works.


Using an Italian Keyboard.

The option + N will Also give you a Small Tilde ˜ as apposed to ~

  • This small tilde is normally used to accent over the other letters. If you Option + N and then for example o you will get õ Not entering another compatible character while the small tilde is highlighted and moving on will leave you with ˜ – markhunte Jan 16 '14 at 18:34
  • Totally fails to answer the question, tells you how to make the wrong tilde, should be deleted. – Tom Gewecke Feb 10 '16 at 13:16

I have a Spanish keyboard. Alt+Ñ works just fine.It gives you this ~. If you press that combination, it gives you the tilde highlighted in yellow. This means that if you press a valid letter just after the tilde, it will place it over that letter. If it is not valid, it just leaves the tilde as it is and writes the letter you pressed. If you press space after the tilde, it will leave it as it is, like this ~. Hope this helped :)


I struggled a lot about writing accents and special characters in macOS with an Italian keyboard. The most comfortable way to do them is to hold option + press a key.

Specifically, for tilde, as mention above is Option + 5 (try other keys also, you'll be used to it in a while).

There are other special combinations for accents which are:

  • option + N and a letter for ñ
  • option + U and a letter for ü
  • option + 8 and a letter for ú
  • option + 9 and a letter for ù
  • option + ì and a letter for ô

Correct combination on an italian keyboard is alt+5

In System Preferences/Keyboard/Input Soruces, press alt and it will show what each key does.

  • Could you explain WHY you think it is useful to add yet another copy of the same answer that was already provided twice here over 3 years ago?? I recommend you delete it. – Tom Gewecke Jul 14 '17 at 12:42

It is left Alt + ^ which will give you tilda sign over Swedish Mac keyboard.

  • The question is for the Italian keyboard, not Swedish – klanomath Feb 10 '16 at 10:33

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