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Unicode supports severalphonetic scripts and notation systems through its existing scripts and the addition of extrablocks with phonetic characters. These phonetic characters are derived from an existing script, usually Latin, Greek or Cyrillic. Apart from theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA),extensions to the IPA andobsolete and nonstandard IPA symbols, these blocks also contain characters from theUralic Phonetic Alphabet and theAmericanist Phonetic Alphabet.

TheInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) makes use of letters from other writing systems as most phonetic scripts do. IPA notably uses Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters. Combining diacritics also add meaning to the phonetic text. Finally, these phonetic alphabets make use of modifier letters, that are specially constructed for phonetic meaning. A "modifier letter" is strictly intended not as an independent grapheme but as a modification of the preceding character^[1] resulting in a distinct grapheme, notably in the context of the International Phonetic Alphabet. For example,ʰ should not occur on its own but modifies the preceding or following symbol. Thus,tʰ is a single IPA symbol, distinct fromt. In practice, however, several of these "modifier letters" are also used as full graphemes, e.g.ʿ as transliterating Semiticayin or Hawaiianʻokina, or˚ transliterating Abkhazә.

The following tables indicates the Unicode code point sequences for phonemes as used in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet. A bold code point indicates that the Unicode chart provides an application note such as "voiced retroflex lateral" forU+026DɭLATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH RETROFLEX HOOK. An entry in bold italics indicates the character name itself refers to a phoneme such asU+0298ʘLATIN LETTER BILABIAL CLICK

  Basic Latin/Greek  Latin extended  IPA extension

IPA:Vowels
Front Central Back Close i y ɨ ʉ ɯ u Near-close ɪ ʏ ʊ Close-mid e ø ɘ ɵ ɤ o Mid e̞ ø̞ ə ɤ̞ o̞ Open-mid ɛ œ ɜ ɞ ʌ ɔ Near-open æ ɐ Open a ɶ ä ɑ ɒ
IPA help  audio full chart template Legend:unrounded • rounded

The following figures depict the phonetic vowels and their Unicode / UCS code points, arranged to represent the phoneticvowel trapezium. Vowels appearing in pairs in the figure to the right indicate rounded and unrounded variations respectively. Again, characters with Unicode names referring to phonemes are indicated by bold text. Those with explicit application notes are indicated by bold italic text. Those from borrowed unchanged from another script (Latin, Greek or Cyrillic) are indicated by italics. Before and after a bullet are theunrounded • rounded vowels.

Diacritics may be encoded as eithermodifier (e.g. ˳) orcombining (e.g.◌̥) characters.

• Basic Latin (0020–007E),IPA example:Palatal approximant (006A)
• Latin-1 Supplement (0080–00FF),IPA example:Voiceless palatal fricative (00E7)
• Latin Extended-A (0100–017F),IPA example:Velar nasal (014B)
• Latin Extended-B (0180–024F),IPA example:Tenuis dental click (01C0 0287)
• IPA Extensions (0250–02AF),IPA example:Voiced retroflex fricative (0290)
• Spacing Modifier Letters (02B0–02FF),IPA example:Palatal ejective (0063 02BC)
• Combining Diacritical Marks (0300–036F),IPA example:Voiceless bilabial nasal (006D 0325)
• Greek and Coptic (0370–03FF),IPA example:Voiceless dental fricative (03B8)
• Combining Diacritical Marks Extended (1AB0–1AFF),extIPA examples: combining parentheses
• Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement (1DC0–1DFF),IPA example: Rising-falling contour tone (1DC8)
• General Punctuation (2000–206F),IPA example:Linking (absence of a break) (203F)
• Superscripts and Subscripts (2070–209F),IPA example:Nasal release (207F)
• Arrows (2190–21FF),IPA example:Global rise (2197)
• Latin Extended-C (2C60–2C7F),IPA example:Labiodental flap (2C71)
• Modifier Tone Letters (A700–A71F),IPA example:Upstep (A71B)
• Phonetic Extensions (1D00–1D7F)
• Phonetic Extensions Supplement (1D80–1DBF)
• Latin Extended-D (A720–A7FF),extIPA example:Voiceless retroflex lateral fricative (A78E)
• Latin Extended-E (AB30–AB6F),IPA example:Voiceless retroflex affricate ligature (AB67)
• Latin Extended-F (10780–107BF)
• Latin Extended-G (1DF00–1DFFF),extIPA example:Voiceless palatal lateral fricative (1DF06)

SixUnicode blocks contain many phonetic symbols:

The characters in the "Spacing Modifier Letters" block are intended as forming a unity with the preceding letter (which they "modify"). E.g. the characterU+02B0ʰMODIFIER LETTER SMALL H isn't intended simply as a superscripth (^h), but as the mark of aspiration placed after the letter being aspirated, as inpʰ "aspiratedvoiceless bilabial plosive". The block contains:

• Latin superscript modifier letters: (U+02B0–U+02B8): ʰ aspiration;ʱ breathy voice, murmured;ʲ palatalization;ʳ, ʴ, ʵ, ʶ r-coloring or r-offglides; ʷ labialization;ʸ palatalization,Americanist usage for U+02B2
• Miscellaneous phonetic modifiers: (U+02B9–U+02D7): ʹ ʺ ʻ ʼ ʽ ʾ ʿ ˀ ˁ ˂ ˃ ˄ ˅ ˆ ˇ ˈ ˉ ˊ ˋ ˌ ˍ ˎ ˏ ː ˑ ˒ ˓ ˔ ˕ ˖ ˗
• Spacing clones of diacritics: (U+02D8–U+02DD): ˘breve; ˙dot above;˚ring above;˛ogonek;˜small tilde;˝double acute accent
• Additions based on 1989 IPA: (U+02DE–U+02E4): ˞ ˟ ˠ ˡ ˢ ˣ ˤ
• Tone letters: (U+02E5–U+02E9): ˥ ˦ ˧ ˨ ˩
• ExtendedBopomofo tone marks:U+02EA˪MODIFIER LETTER YIN DEPARTING TONE MARK;U+02EB˫MODIFIER LETTER YANG DEPARTING TONE MARK
• IPA modifiers:U+02ECˬMODIFIER LETTER VOICING, unaspirated
• Other modifier letters:U+02EEˮMODIFIER LETTER DOUBLE APOSTROPHE forNenets
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) modifiers: (U+02EF–U+02FF): ˯˰ ˱ ˲ ˳ ˴ ˵ ˶ ˷ ˸ ˹ ˺ ˻ ˼ ˽ ˾ ˿

This block, together with Phonetic Extensions Supplement below, contains:

• Small capitals "ɢ ɪ ɴ ɶ ʀ ʏ ʙ ʜ ʟ"
• Turned small letters "ɐ ɥ ɯ ɹ ɺ ɻ ʇ ʌ ʍ ʎ ʞ ʮ ʯ"
• Extra small capitals "ʁ ʛ ᴀ ᴁ ᴃ ᴄ ᴅ ᴆ ᴇ ᴊ ᴋ ᴌ ᴍ ᴎ ᴏ ᴐ ᴘ ᴙ ᴚ ᴛ ᴜ ᴠ ᴡ ᴢ ᴣ ᴦ ᴧ ᴨ ᴩ ᴪ"
• Letters with palatal hooks "ƫ ᶀ ᶁ ᶂ ᶃ ᶄ ᶅ ᶆ ᶇ ᶈ ᶉ ᶊ ᶋ ᶌ ᶍ ᶎ ᶪ ᶵ"
• Letters with retroflex hooks "ᶏ ᶐ ᶒ ᶓ ᶔ ᶕ ᶖ ᶗ ᶘ ᶙ ᶚ ᶩ ᶯ ᶼ"

Many systems provide a way to select Unicode characters visually.ISO/IEC 14755 refers to this as ascreen-selection entry method.

Microsoft Windows has provided a Unicode version of the Character Map program (find it by hitting⊞ Win+R then typecharmap then hit↵ Enter) since version NT 4.0 – appearing in the consumer edition since XP. This is limited to characters in theBasic Multilingual Plane (BMP). Characters are searchable by Unicode character name, and the table can be limited to a particular code block. More advanced third-party tools of the same type are also available (a notablefreeware example isBabelMap).

macOS provides a "character palette" with much the same functionality, along with searching by related characters, glyph tables in a font, etc. It can be enabled in the input menu in the menu bar under System Preferences → International → Input Menu (or System Preferences → Language and Text → Input Sources) or can be viewed under Edit → Emoji & Symbols in many programs.

Equivalent tools – such asgucharmap (GNOME) orkcharselect (KDE) – exist on most Linux desktop environments.

• Unicode symbols
• Universal Character Set characters
• Latin script in Unicode
• IPA

• Links to PDFs of Unicode codes for several phonetic symbol sets

• Phonetics
• Unicode blocks

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles needing additional references from January 2016
• All articles needing additional references
• Pages with plain IPA