CharMap vs Unicode Pad
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
CharMap
Explore and manage Unicode characters with this utility. Organize favorites, view details, and copy characters to your clipboard. Use the custom keyboard to insert them anywhere and sync collections across devices.
- Browse curated character categories
- Organize favorite characters
- View character details and copy to clipboard
- Insert characters with custom keyboard
- Discover characters and blocks
- Sync collections across devices
- Preview system fonts
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CharMap allows to you discover, organize, and use unicode characters. FEATURES • Browse a collection of curated character categories, and organize your favourite characters into custom collections. • View character details and copy characters to the clipboard in a variety of formats. • Enable the CharMap keyboard to insert characters wherever custom keyboards are supported. • Discover unicode characters and blocks using a dedicated unicode browser. • Automatically sync your collections between devices. • Quickly access your custom collections using the collection widget. • Browse system fonts and view font metadata. • No ads, trackers, or analytics. Your data is stored on-device, and optionally synced across your private iCloud account.
Unicode Pad
Access and copy thousands of Unicode characters to use in any app. Create custom keyboards for frequently used symbols and share them with friends. Search characters by name, codepoint, or glyph, and view detailed descriptions.
- Copy characters to clipboard
- Customizable keyboards
- Share custom keyboards
- Search characters by name/codepoint/glyph
- View extended character descriptions
- Thousands of symbols available
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Note: This app supports only in-app custom keyboards! For a fancier version which also supports iOS 8 and later custom keyboards, check out the Unicode Pad Pro app! • Tested on latest iOS 11 • Support for Unicode 11 standard • Copy characters to clipboard for use in other apps, like web, mail, chat, notes… practically any iOS app! • Notepad with customizable keyboards, for your often-used characters and for copying several characters at once. Great for casual writing, too! • Share your custom keyboards with your friends! • Send mail and tweets right from within the app! • Huge selection of symbols (thousands), in fact all that are available on your device. Database itself actually contains data for all Unicode characters (over 100,000), but only glyphs available in iOS system font are actually visible. • Quick acces to many groups of commonly used symbols! • Search for characters by name, hexadecimal codepoint or glyph! Find similar and related characters instantly! • Streamlined design, specifically optimized for each device. Support for all device orientations and Retina display. • Support for Backspace, New line, Shift and Alternate special keys on custom keyboards. • Custom keyboard sizes up to 6x16=96 keys. • View extended character descriptions on Wikipedia, right inside the app! This works particularly great for emoticons! • One universal application works on iPhone, iPod and iPad! • Reference booklet of characters available on modern computers! Paper Unicode maps are over 1000 pages long! • Developers: see which characters are available on your iOS device! • Great for scientific, mathematical and physics notation, handles many superscripts, subscripts and other symbols! • Excellent for phonetic notation! • Perfect for writing Unicode poetry! • Awesome for making interesting app names! • HTML entity names for relevant characters • UNIHAN english definitions for CJK ideograms for many characters • Flick left and right for next and previous characters in detail view • Affordable price!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: CharMap at Free against Unicode Pad's $2.99. CharMap also leads on rating (4.0 vs 3.5) and ratings volume (57 vs 8). Unicode Pad's advantage is review sentiment (74% vs 54%) and chart position (#184 vs unranked). On update cadence, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
CharMap is free to download; Unicode Pad costs $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
CharMap holds the better App Store score, 4.0 against 3.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: CharMap has 57 ratings behind it against 8, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 54% of CharMap's written reviews are positive against 74% of Unicode Pad's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
CharMap ships an update every 4 months, Unicode Pad every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on October 23, 2026 and October 20, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | CharMap | Unicode Pad |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $2.99 |
| Rating | 4.0 (57 ratings) — better | 3.5 (8 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 53.7% of reviews | 73.7% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 57 — better | 8 |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Every 3 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Best chart rank | — | #184 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 11.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 28 MB | 140 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Conor Mulligan | Ziga Kranjec |
Customer experience
CharMap
Unicode Pad
User reviews
CharMap
From 57 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🌟 Genuinely amazing for needs
- 💡 Custom keyboards brilliant
- 💯 Has every Unicode
- ✨ Very impressive
- 👍 Great for computer science
Room to improve
- ❌ No return/enter key
- ❓ Feature not obvious
- ⚠️ Characters omitted in other apps
- ⚪ Keyboard looks like white rectangle
- 😵 UI is ugly and old
Unicode Pad
From 8 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Comprehensive symbol catalog
- 💡 Customizable keyboards
- 🚀 Easy to use interface
- 🔍 Powerful search functionality
- 🌟 Useful for nicknames and special characters
Room to improve
- 🐛 Occasional crashes
- 📦 Some characters display as boxes
- 🐌 Laggy scrolling and slow loading
- 🖱️ Manual copy-pasting required
- ⌨️ Limited keyboard space for custom keyboards
Bugs and requests
CharMap
Reported bugs
12 issues- Characters omitted in other apps
- Keyboard looks like white rectangle in some apps
- Private Use Area characters not shown
- Collections feature quit working
- App crashes every time it's opened
Show 7 moreShow fewer
- App crashes on iPad Pro
- App crashes on iPad
- Everything gone after update
- App doesn't open after update
- Some symbols are not shown
- Keyboard not showing up immediately
- Preferences -> font closes app
Requested features
20 requests- Add return/enter key
- Batch add characters to collections
- Multi-font support
- Unicode 18.0 support
- Add Unicode 17.0
Show 15 moreShow fewer
- Ability to select characters with single click
- Add 'raised to the power of x' symbol
- Add superscripts in letter, equation, and inequality form
- Option to format characters (LTR/RTL)
- Make fonts usable in 'Unicode'
- Implement custom font API
- Search for character option
- Search by character name
- Add Sutton SignWriting block
- Add symbol search
- Update UI with SF symbols
- Add dark mode support
- Rename collections
- Backup and Restore collections
- Put collections on top of list when using as keyboard
Unicode Pad
Reported bugs
17 issues- App crashes when selecting notepad
- App crashes on startup
- Scrolling is laggy
- Custom keyboards take time to load
- Characters not appearing on keyboard after adding
Show 12 moreShow fewer
- Some symbols don't copy properly (show as boxes)
- App won't update
- App becomes very slow after updates
- Custom keyboards are hard to see after update
- Buttons disappear
- Detail window cannot be closed
- Glyph description length exceeds screen
- App freezes and requires device reset
- Favorites/copy buttons sometimes go invisible
- Cannot get to clipboard to post to other apps
- App doesn't work with Facebook
- Characters not displayed (show as squares)
Requested features
15 requests- Ability to add keyboards to other apps
- More space for custom keyboards
- Integration with iOS keyboard
- Add backspace/delete/return keys to custom keyboards
- Ability to rearrange keys on custom keyboards
Show 10 moreShow fewer
- Ability to remove custom keys while on the keyboard
- Sort Unicode blocks numerically
- Save/swap out keyboards from within the app
- Option to hide iOS incompatible characters
- Add space bar to custom keyboard layouts
- Copy as HTML option
- Precise selection and editing features
- Macros for multiple keystrokes
- Dark mode option
- Advanced analytics dashboard
In-app purchases
CharMap
No in-app purchases
Unicode Pad
No in-app purchases








