How to type the plus-minus symbol (±) on a Mac

An easy way to remember it

The equals key already carries the + sign. Adding Option to Shift + = “adds a minus” to the plus, which is a handy mnemonic. Plain Option + =, without Shift, gives the related ≠ (not equal) sign, and Option + / gives ÷. Our Option key cheat sheet lists every symbol on that layer.

Using the Character Viewer instead

On British and other ISO Mac keyboards there is a second route: the key to the left of 1 is printed § and ±, so Shift + § types ± too.

If the shortcut does nothing, you may be using a keyboard layout that maps the equals key differently. Press Control + Command + Space, type “plus-minus” in the search field and double-click the result. The Character Viewer then keeps ± under Recently Used, so it is one click away next time. The Character Viewer guide explains its other features.

Make your own shortcut

If you type ± often, for example when writing lab reports, add a text replacement in System Settings → Keyboard → Text Replacements. Enter +-+ as the shortcut and ± as the replacement. The same shortcut then syncs to your iPhone and iPad through iCloud.

Using ± correctly

Put a space either side when it joins two values, as in 21.5 ± 0.3 °C, and write the unit only once when the tolerance uses the same unit. For confidence intervals, many journals prefer an explicit range such as 18–25 instead. The plus-minus symbol page has its HTML entity ± and code point U+00B1, and the math symbols collection collects related operators.