The "Advanced view" check box can be used to inspect the character sets in a font according to different encodings (code pages), including Unicode code ranges, to locate particular characters by their Unicode code point and to search for characters by their Unicode name.

Beginning with Windows Vista, the user can also type the name of the utility in the Start Menu search box.

[3] A secondary character map program is accessible in a text field on Windows 10 and Windows 11 computers, using the keyboard shortcut ⊞ Win+., or the 😀 key in Windows 10's virtual touch keyboard, which is mainly used for the purposes of using emoji, but also allows access to a smaller set of special characters.

[4] Other operating systems such as some Unix-Linux variants with GUIs, the HP-48 series graphing calculators and others also have a similar accessory.

A Linux GNUstep character map application, "Charmap", is developed by GNU Savannah.