How to Type At Sign @
Keyboard shortcuts for Windows, Mac, Chromebook, iPhone, Android & international layouts. Copy or type the @ symbol instantly.
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The at sign @ is one of the most essential characters in modern computing. Every email address uses it, every social media handle starts with it, and programmers encounter it in countless languages and frameworks. Yet finding it on your keyboard can be surprisingly tricky, especially on international layouts.
This guide shows you exactly how to type the at sign on every major platform: Windows, Mac, Chromebook, iPhone, Android, and Linux. We cover alt codes, keyboard shortcuts for US and international layouts, character maps, and the fastest copy-paste method.
Whether you need @ for an email address, a Twitter mention, or coding, you will find the right method below. The @ symbol on this page is standard Unicode text that works everywhere, in any application, on any device.
Finding the At Sign on Any Layout
The at sign @ hides in different places depending on your keyboard. On a US layout it's Shift+2; on a UK layout that same Shift+2 gives a quotation mark, and @ moves to Shift+' instead — the two are famously swapped, which trips up travelers constantly. On a German QWERTZ keyboard the symbol isn't on a number at all: press AltGr+Q. Windows users anywhere can fall back on Alt+64 with the numeric keypad, since 64 is the character's decimal code.
Its Unicode code point is U+0040, and on the web you can write it as @ or the named entity @. The @ carries real meaning wherever it lands: it splits an email address into user and domain, as in [email protected]; it prefixes handles and mentions on nearly every social platform; and it appears as a decorator in Python and a marker in various data and config formats. That range is why locating it quickly matters — and why, on an unfamiliar physical keyboard or a phone, copying the character or holding the key down to reveal it beats hunting across the layout.
At Sign FAQ
The alt code for @ is Alt+64. Hold the Alt key and type 64 on the numeric keypad, then release Alt. Make sure Num Lock is enabled. On most US keyboards, Shift+2 is much faster.
Different countries use different keyboard layouts. On US keyboards, @ is at Shift+2. On UK keyboards, it is at Shift+' (apostrophe). On German keyboards, use AltGr+Q. On French keyboards, use AltGr+0. The physical key depends on your operating system's language settings.
On a German keyboard layout (QWERTZ), press AltGr+Q to type @. The AltGr key is to the right of the spacebar. Alternatively, you can hold Ctrl+Alt and press Q, which has the same effect as AltGr+Q on Windows.
The @ symbol has creative names worldwide: 'Klammeraffe' (spider monkey) in German, 'arroba' in Spanish and Portuguese, 'chiocciola' (snail) in Italian, 'apenstaartje' (monkey tail) in Dutch, and 'kukac' (worm) in Hungarian.
The @ symbol dates back to at least the 6th century as a scribal abbreviation for the Latin word 'ad' (meaning 'at' or 'to'). It was used in commercial contexts for pricing (e.g., '5 items @ $2 each'). Ray Tomlinson chose it for email in 1971 because it was rarely used and clearly separated the user name from the computer name.
In HTML, you can type @ directly or use the character entity @ or @. The @ sign does not need to be escaped in HTML, but encoding it can help prevent email address harvesting by spam bots.