CharMap vs Menu Box
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.
Menu Box
Create visually appealing menus for your device's shortcuts. Customize menu items with emojis, app icons, or custom images to build personalized automations. Dynamically generate menus on the fly for advanced shortcut customization.
- Create beautiful menus for Shortcuts
- Customize with emojis, SF Symbols, or custom images
- Attach custom data to menu items
- Fully controllable via Shortcuts
- Dynamically create menus on the fly
- Enhance Action Button functionality
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Menu Box allows you to create beautiful menus in Shortcuts, further customising your advanced Automations. Menus can be created using emojis, SF Symbols App Icons or your own custom images to create truly individual menus with near limitless options. Custom data attached to each menu items allows you to create even more advanced Shortcuts. Menu Box is fully controllable via Shortcuts, including creating Menus dynamically on the fly. Menu Box is perfect for creating advanced Shortcuts to allow you to further customise how your menus look, and becomes especially useful when combined with the Action Button. --- Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Menu Box at 4.7 against CharMap's 4.0. Menu Box also leads on review sentiment (86% vs 53%) and update cadence (fortnightly vs every 4 months). CharMap's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 4) and ratings volume (56 vs 14). On price, ads 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
Both are free to download. Menu Box sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per year. CharMap asks for nothing beyond the download.
Menu Box holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.0. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 56 and 14 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 53% of CharMap's written reviews are positive against 86% of Menu Box's.
CharMap ships an update every 4 months, Menu Box fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 16, 2026 and October 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | CharMap | Menu Box |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.0 (56 ratings) | 4.7 (14 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 53.0% of reviews | 85.7% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 56 — better | 14 |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Fortnightly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 17.5 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 28 MB | 31 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Conor Mulligan | Snailed It Development Ltd |
Customer experience
CharMap
Menu Box
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
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- 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
Menu Box
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
CharMap
No in-app purchases
Menu Box
- Premium$4.991 Year
- Tip Jar - Small$0.99
- Tip Jar - Medium$2.99
- Tip Jar - Large$4.99
