How do I type the Russian ruble currency sign in macOS

Question

It's possible to type different currencies sign:

Shift+4 prints US dollar
Opt+Shift+2 prints Euro

How can one type the Russian ruble sign? ₽

Answer 1

The Rouble symbol ₽ is available in all of Mac OS’s Russian keyboard layouts:

• “Russian”: opt+р, where р is on QWERTY’s h key;
• “Russian QWERTY”: opt+р, where р is QWERTY’s r;
• “Russian (PC)”: opt+8, same as QWERTY’s 8.

If you’re not mostly typing in Russian, then you presumably don’t want one of these as your primary keyboardlayout. But you can add one as a secondary layout, and then quickly switch to/from it when necessary using ctrl+space or ctrl+opt+space. To set this up, follow the steps in David Andersson’s answer, but at the stage of adding the input source, select the language “Russian” and then the layout desired.

Answer 2

The ₽ character is a unicode 0x20BD. You can enter this hexadecimal value from the keyboard when your keyboard input source is set to Unicode Hex Input. If necessary, see the section below titled “Adding Unicode Hex Input Method”.

If you only have two keyboard input sources, the you can enter the following to get the ₽ character. Here, I assume the keyboard input source is not already Unicode Hex Input.

control+alt+space
alt+20BD
control+alt+space

Here, control+alt+space means to hold down the control and alt keys while pressing the space key. Also, alt+20BD means to hold down the alt key while pressing the 2, 0, B and D keys.

Adding Unicode Hex Input Method

1. Goto the Keyboard pane of the System Preferences application and select the Input Sources tab.

2. Select on the + button to add a new keyboard input method.

3. Scroll down to the bottom and click on Others.

4. Highlight Unicode Hex Input, as shown below.

   

5. Select the Add button, then make sure the “Show input menu in menu bar” box is checked off, as shown above.

6. Select the Shortcuts tab, then highlight Input Sources. Make sure the “Select the previous input source” and “Select next source in Input menu” boxes are checked off, as shown below.

   

References

• How can I type unicode characters without using the mouse?
• How to Use Unicode Hex Input Method in Mac?
• How do I type a Unicode special space characters without installing the Unicode Hex Input Keyboard?
• "How can I set up a keyboard shortcut for switching input source?"

Answer 3

Just to provide the other two alternatives to achieving this…

You could set up a text replacement [System Preference > Keyboard > Text]
Here, I've arbitrarily used $r as my trigger. I copy pasted the Rouble sign from this page as my replacement. The only downside of this method is to generate the character you need to type a Space or punctuation afterwards, to make it actuate the replacement.

Also note that some non-Apple apps, like MS Office, have their own replacement systems which you have to set up separately.

Alternatively, use Ukelele (freeware) which allows you to design entire custom keyboard layouts. For a simple swap like this, maybe just pick another Opt/character to sacrifice to your replacement. I'd consider sacrificing ® from Opt/r to keep it memorable.