How do I type the degree symbol under X11 (using a default English keyboard layout)?

This symbol is used to represent degrees in many different fields, such as angle or temperatures. It is obtained by drawing a small circle as a superscript. The Unicode of the icon is U + 00B0.

on Mac:

Using keyboard shortcuts : OPTION + SHIFT + 8

on PC:

Press and hold the ALT key and type 0 1 7 6 on the numeric keypad of your keyboard. Make sure the NumLock is on and type 0176 with the leading zero. If there is no numeric keypad, press and hold the Fn before typing the 0176 numbers of degree symbol.

on iPhone & iPad:

• Step 1: Click the 123 button on the screen keyboard to open the number keyboard.

• Step 2: Hold down zero (i.e. 0), and move your finger to choose the degree symbol (i.e. °).

on LaTeX:

gensymb

usepackage{gensymb}
begin{document}
The right angle is 90si{degree}.
end{document}

textcomp

usepackage{textcomp}
begin{document}
The round angle is 360si{textdegree}.
end{document}

siunitx

usepackage{siunitx}
begin{document}
Degree symbol: 45si{degree}.
end{document}

circ

^{circ}

Check out more: https://www.degree-symbol.com/

If you're using the US international keyboard (us_intl), you can do Alt Gr+Shift+;

in vi

• hold down ctrl, press and release v, release ctrl button
• hit u and release u
• type 00b0

the ° will appear, continue typing normal characters

this does not work at a shell/terminal prompt, this is in the VI or VIM editor.

hold down 'alt' key and while holding it down, hold down the 'shift' key too. and while holding down both of those, hold down the 'u' key. now, release all three. a 'u' with an underscore should appear. now press and release the 'b' key and then press and release the '0' (zero) key. now, press the 'enter' key. a '°' should appear.

You can find the way to display any symbol using xmodmap:

sh$ xmodmap -pke | grep degre
keycode  19 = 0 parenright agrave 0 braceright degree at degree
#             1      2        3   4      5        6   7   8

For each keycode, it shows what symbol is associated depending on the modifiers:

1. no modifier
2. Shift+Key
3. mode_switch+Key
4. mode_switch+Shift+Key
5. AltGr+Key
6. AltGr+Shift+Key
7. ???
8. ???

In that example, I can see "degree" is in 6th position and the plain key (position 1) is 0. So I can obtain the degree by pressing AltGr+Shift+0 in that order: depending on your configuration, if you press Shift first, Shift+AltGr is understood as an emulation of the Meta key which has different bindings.

As a follow-up to @Gert's answer (since I cannot comment yet), I've found a slightly different method is required when using Raspbian Jessie:

with Ctrl and Shift held down, type u B 0 and then release all keys.

ALT+0 works for me (I'm using Gentoo Linux).

Set up a Compose key. On Ubuntu, this is easily done in the keyboard preferences, “Layout” tab, “Options” subdialog. Caps Lock is a good choice as it's pretty much useless (all remotely serious editors have a command to make the selection uppercase for the rare times it's needed).

Press Compose followed by two characters (occasionally three) to enter a character you don't have on your keyboard. Usually the resulting character combines the two characters you type, for example Compose ' a enters á and Compose s s enters ß. The degree symbol ° is one of the less memorable combinations, it's on Compose o o.

You can also use Alt Gr+Shift+0.

Ctrl + Shift + u (this will show an underlined u), and with those keys held down, type the unicode value (in this case B0). Then, with Ctrl + Shift still pressed, press enter. You might find that in the last step, you do not need to press enter, and that you only need release all keys.

Full list here.