Apple Has Changed Several Key Cap Labels From Words to Glyphs on Its Latest MacBook Keyboards

“Mr. Macintosh”, on Twitter/X last week:

Small change:

Looks like Apple updated the keyboard on the new M5 16‑inch MacBook Pro. The Backspace, Return, Shift, and Tab labels are gone, replaced with symbols instead.

All the new MacBook keyboards sport this same change, including the M5 Air and A18 Pro MacBook Neo. I’m not a fan. I like the words on those keys. But I’m willing to admit it might just be that I’ve been using Apple keyboards with words on those keys since I was like 10 years old. iOS 26 switched from the word “return” to the “⏎” glyph on the software keyboard (and removed the word “space” from the spacebar — which, in hindsight, seemed needless to label).

The Escape key is still labelled “esc”, and the modifier keys (Fn, Control, Option, and Command) still show the names underneath or next to the glyphs. I suspect this is because documentation — including Apple’s own — often uses names for these keys (Option-Shift-Command-K), not the glyphs (⌥⇧⌘K). It’s only in the last few years that Apple began including the glyphs for Control (⌃) and Option (⌥) — until recently, those keys were labelled only by name. They added the ⌃ and ⌥ glyphs between 2017 and 2018. And until that change in 2018, Apple added the label “alt” to the Option key — a visual turd so longstanding that it dates back even to my own beloved keyboard.

Outside the U.S., Apple has been using glyphs for these key caps for a long time. The change from words to glyphs is new only here.

★ Wednesday, 11 March 2026