Create soft hyphens anywhere in mac os x and windows

Soft hyphens are a really useful thing to make long words look good on narrow screens, such as mobile screens. TL;DR? Just go to https://unicode.flopp.net/c/00AD and copy the soft hyphen from there, paste it anywhere.

Without soft hyphens:

With soft hypens:

Mac OS X

Where to find them on mac os x? In your browser (we recommend Google Chrome), in the menu bar you should see this:

Drag and drop the soft hyphen into any input field or document.

Shortcuts for Power Users

You can just type Ctrl+Command+Space to open the emoji & symbols window pretty much anywhere.

Pro tipp: Mac OS X lets you switch between a full window and a tooltip, this is handy when your cursor is at the right position in an input field (i.e. in a browser, on a website):

This popup behaviour can be toggled by clicking on the small icon next to the search bar:

And here is a video:

Adding the soft hyphen to the favorites for quicker access in Mac OS X

  1. Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard
  2. Check the box beside “Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar” a.k.a. “Show Keyboard, Emoji & Symbol Viewers in menu bar”.
  3. Click on the keyboard icon that has now been placed on your menu bar.
  4. Choose Show Character Viewer (a.k.a. Show Emoji & Symbols worked)
  5. In the search box of the pop-up window that just appeared, type “soft hyphen” (without the quotes).  If the pop-up is shrunken (accomplished by clicking the keyboard icon in its upper corner), then you will not be able to proceed. Several characters may appear and the first looks like a hyphen, but is a soft hyphen. In that case, click on the keyboard icon to switch back to the full mode.
  6. When you’ve found the soft hyphen, click on it. It becomes selected and to the right you see the name “SOFT HYPHEN”.
  7. Click on Add to Favorites
  8. You can now close this window or add the character directly to wherever your cursor currently is positioned.

Microsoft Windows

There is really poor support for non-printable characters in Microsoft Windows. However you can go to https://unicode-table.com/en/00AD/ and copy the shy hyphen from there and insert it anywhere, for example in a form field on a website in the Chrome browser.