How to type the Pi (π) symbol on a Mac or iPhone

Macworld

It’s every math geek’s favorite day—March 14 or 3.14, so this is the day when you’ll want to know how to type the Pi symbol: π. It’s one of the most recognizable symbols in mathematics but it’s not found on any standard English keyboard—there isn’t even an emoji for it. So can you get it to show up?

The easiest way is to use a Mac. Here are the steps:

Press and hold the option key (next to Command).

Type the letter “P”.

Release/repeat.

That’s it. No matter what app you’re in or font you’re using, the Pi symbol will appear in the place of the letter “P” when you hold down the option key.

It’s a little trickier on your iPhone and iPad. First, you’ll need to add a new keyboard:

Head over to the Settings app.

Tap General and Keyboard.

Tap Keyboards, Add New Keyboard, and select Greek.

Then, when you want to type the Pi symbol, click the globe icon in the bottom left corner of the keyboard until you see the Greek keyboard. Tap the Pi symbol, which is the Greek letter “P” (top row, second from right). Then tap the Globe icon again to return to the English keyboard.

Here are a few other fun Pi facts to impress your friends:

The Pi symbol is denoted by the sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet representing the lowercase letter “P.”

Welsh mathematician William Jones was the first person to use the symbol to express Pi.

Physicist Larry Shaw started celebrating 14 March as Pi day at San Francisco’s Exploratorium science museum. 

The longest extension of pi has been more than 62 trillion decimal places.

In ancient Egypt, people believed the Giza pyramids were built on the principles of Pi.

There’s an entire writing style called Pilish based on Pi’s mnemonic constraints.

If you are trying to find out how to type some other unusual characters take a look at our story on how to type Æ, €, #, @, ©, and more special characters on a Mac.