User manual
First, make sure that you've downloaded Desmos Unlocked for your browser of choice. Desmos Unlocked can be installed from the web stores for Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Opera. All Chromium browsers (Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, etc.) should be able to download the extension from the Chrome web store. Safari is not supported.
All user preferences are managed through the extension's popup UI. To access this popup in you browser, click on the Desmos Unlocked icon located to the right of the URL bar. In Firefox, the icon should appear automatically. In Chromium browsers, you may need to pin the extension first.
Changes to preferences made in the popup window are reflected automatically in the graphing calculator. You do not need to refresh the page after changes a preference. You can also update these preferences anywhere; you don't have to navigate to the Desmos graphing calculator before making changes. The one exception is the "Enable extended shortcuts" setting, which requires a reload after toggling for the change to take effect in the calculator. If you forget this step, then you may notice that Desmos fails to render the symbol for a shortcut you've typed.
Desmos Unlocked allows you to use many more mathematical shortcuts for symbols in the graphing calculator than the Desmos defaults. You may already be familiar with shortcuts like pi, phi, and int, which produce π, φ, and ∫, respectively by default in the graphing calculator. Desmos treats π as a constant, φ as a variable, and ∫ as the start of an integral expression. In a similar way, Desmos Unlocked to type things like gamma and to, and have them substituted into γ and →. γ is treated as a variable, and → is recognized as a special symbol used with tickers. Most of the shortcuts provided by this extension produce symbols that are treated as variables, though some are treated as parts of special expressions.
Shortcut substitution is done through the MathQuill formula editor, which replaces supported LaTeX commands (excluding the leading backslash) with nicely rendered symbols.
γ in such a way that breaks preexisting graphs, although this is unlikely.
Here's a look at the Desmos team's stance on the matter (taken from this thread):
One reason we sometimes seem to be a bit conservative in what we support is that, once we start to allow some piece of syntax or usage, we're basically committed to supporting it for the rest of time.
For example, here are three hypothetical situations that could possibly occur between now and the rest of time (I just made these up off the top of my head—the details aren't important):
- We want to introduce \gamma as a constant, like \pi or \tau.
- We want to make \sigma() an alias to stddev().
- We want to give \phi special semantics because of spherical functions, the same way \theta is special because of polar functions.
When we make an identifier into a constant, function name, or otherwise "special" value, it becomes illegal to use in most other ways, e.g., as the target of an assignment. So if we were to release all of those features tomorrow, any graphs that currently have expressions like \gamma=4 or y=2+\sigma or \phi=1 would suddenly be broken.
So in that sense the "unsupported" Greek letters in Desmos are a little like "reserved words" in other programming languages: they don't do anything special right now, but they might later, so they're not "allowed." I put "allowed" in quotes, because it's obviously still technically possible to hack other symbols into expressions (I wish we had made that fully an error ten years ago), and people do it, which means we're probably going to have to untangle that headache at some point if any of the scenarios above (or similar) come to pass. And honestly, we work really hard not to break existing graphs, even if they rely on undocumented or unintended behavior, but sometimes it's inevitable.
Be aware of the possibility of breaking changes introduced by Desmos when creating big graphs that you would want to work far into the future.
These are the shortcuts enabled by default in the graphing calculator without any extensions.
The basic symbols are mostly Greek letters, with some other common symbols thrown in. Most are treated as variables, including pm (±), mp (∓), perp (⊥), and parallel (∥).
Almost all the advanced shortcuts become treated as variables, including dot, vec, and hat. Even the fonts (like mathsf) are treated this way, which may be unexpected.
If the extended shortcuts feature is enabled, the MathQuill formula editor is overridden whenever the calculator first loads. These preload modifications to MathQuill add hundreds of new shortcuts available for use in the graphing calculator. Many shortcuts are aliases for the same symbol. For example, notin, cong, equiv, oplus, and otimes all map to the symbol ≡. Since many shortcuts collide with other shortcuts and function names (e.g. isin and sin, psi and epsilon, etc.), you may consider using a different alias for a symbol if another is giving you trouble.
You can enable one of these shortcuts by typing it into the textbox. The text must be a space-delimited list of only letters, where each word is a shortcut you want enabled. Make sure to press the set button after updating the text in order for your changes to take effect.
List of extended shortcuts
triangleright larr amalg downarrow uplus not Leftarrow preceq emsp del
superset harr lrarr lbrack ni swarrow simeq nsubeq ring integers textup
complex ngtr nsupeq bullet cdots Reals notsup bigoplus notin ComplexPlane
Quaternions nsube niton impliedby supeq sqsubseteq bigcup parallelogram
lbrace cuz doesnotcontain bigodot Re notsupe gets Probability in
Rightarrow Leftrightarrow Projective nsubseteq hookrightarrow ellip dArr
notsub textsc partial bigvee nsub nsupseteq otimes exist dots subseteq
ll updownarrow rceil imag leftharpoondown oplus Longleftarrow biguplus
mathbb spadesuit bigtriangleup lArr cup propto frown ddots nwarrow
varnothing quaternions textnormal exists sube isin sqsubset supsete prec
lrArr Uparrow notsubset or smallsetminus diverges alephsym notcontains
nsubsete dnArr longrightarrow textbf clubsuit real bigsqcup Hamiltonian
Complexes converges sf circledot union probability star supe rArr
intersect lowercase Updownarrow Real land supersete qquad mapsto notsube
imaginary prop leftrightarrow because succeq image smile text sharp wr
nsuperseteq nexist italic rightarrow texttt Longleftrightarrow Imaginary
primes circ top angstrom flat cap superseteq xists alefsym tt oslash
Naturals dagger nsupersete reals italics nearrow rbrace searrow nsubset
nabla dnarrow notsupersete bowtie asymp bigcirc Angstrom nsupset oint
subsete notsuperset textrm Im leftharpoonup hellip Rationals odot nsup
projective neg Primes therefore longleftrightarrow em bigwedge
longleftarrow closecurlybrace vert wp doteq dnArrow lowast emptyset
textit pounds models Integers loast bigtriangledown textsf cong
Complexplane subset strong dashv sqcup notsupsete notsubeq heartsuit
opencurlybrace hArr nless wedge setminus notsubsete ellipsis rationals
rfloor complexes and notsupeq Complex uparrow xist contains AA
intersection degree notni nsuperset uppercase bot nsupe notsuperseteq
Oslash measuredangle perpendicular nothing rarr textmd part therefor
dnarr uarr diamondsuit rightharpoonup rbrack empty circle ldots
notsubseteq ominus supset nsupsete supseteq nexists Longrightarrow
equiv natural textsl imagin implies lceil ell bigotimes complexplane
lor darr slash quad Downarrow sqcap alef hellipsis subeq triangle hbar
surd vdash notsupseteq aleph lfloor bull gg ang hookleftarrow angle
leftarrow emph vee ddagger iff diamond sqsupset ast naturals sqsupseteq
rightharpoondown bigcap bold uArr notsupset succ vdots sub triangleleft
Many of these shortcuts may have unexpected behavior, more so even than the advanced shortcuts. Experiment with them to see their behavior in the graphing calculator.
Breakout characters are characters which will take the cursor out of a superscript. By default, Desmos registers +, -, =, <, >, and * as breakout characters. This can lead to the potentially frustrating behavior of typing e x + 1 when you intended to write e x + 1. You can modify the breakout characters by editing the textbox.
When enabled, this options makes Desmos auto-parenthesize all functions, like ln, sin, tan, etc.
Shortcut substitution in subscripts is disabled by default. This option allows you to make MathQuill accept shortcuts while the cursor is in a subscript.