How to type the pound sign on Mac

US versus UK Mac keyboard layouts

The keystroke for typing the British pound sterling (£) on macOS depends entirely on your keyboard's input source. On standard American (US) keyboards, the number 3 key is printed with the hashtag (#) above it, so pressing Option + 3 outputs £. On British ISO Mac keyboards, Apple prints the £ sign directly on the 3 key, so typing Shift + 3 produces £ directly. On UK Mac keyboards, the hashtag is instead moved to Option + 3. Our comprehensive Mac Option key shortcuts guide covers all currency shortcuts across Mac layouts.

Using the macOS Character Viewer

If you use an international layout where Option + 3 is assigned to another accent, you can always summon the macOS Character Viewer. Press Control + Command + Space anywhere on your Mac to pop up the emoji and symbol utility. Search for “pound” in the search bar, then click or double-click the £ character to insert it into your active document. Our Mac Character Viewer guide explains how to expand the viewer to inspect Unicode properties and decimal codes.

Creating a system-wide text replacement

If you write business proposals or deal with UK vendors frequently, you can assign an intuitive snippet in macOS settings. Go to System Settings → Keyboard → Text Replacements. Click the plus (+) icon, type a brief shortcut such as gbpp into the Shortcut field, and paste £ into the Phrase field. Now, whenever you type that trigger word in Mail, Notes, or Messages, macOS will instantly replace it with £. Because text replacements synchronize over iCloud, the shortcut works on your iPad and iPhone as well.

Stylistic conventions and other platforms

In formal publishing and accounting, the pound sign precedes the numerical quantity without an intervening space (£50.00). When referencing British currency in international banking, the ISO currency code GBP is often used instead. If you also use Windows computers, check our walkthrough on typing the pound sign on Windows. To see the symbol's full character history and entity codes, visit the pound sign symbol page and explore other world denominations in the currency symbols collection.