Tool

Accent Keyboard

Pick a language, click the letters you need, and copy the finished word. Sixteen languages, with the Alt code and Mac shortcut for every letter.

Why it builds a word rather than copying one letter

Nobody needs a single ü. They need Müller, or señora, or Kraków — and copying one letter at a time, pasting it, then coming back for the next is slower than looking up the codes.

So the box at the top is a text field you can type in normally. Clicking a letter inserts it wherever your cursor is, which means you can type M, click ü, then type ller and copy the whole name in one go.

Clicking a letter also shows its codes underneath, so if you type it often you can learn the shortcut and stop coming back.

The sixteen languages

Grouped by language rather than by accent type, because that’s how people arrive: you know you’re writing Polish, not that you need an ogonek.

• Spanish — á é í ó ú ü ñ, plus the inverted ¿ and ¡
• French — the full set including œ, æ and the guillemets « »
• German — ä ö ü and the eszett ß
• Portuguese — including the nasal ã and õ
• Italian, Catalan, Welsh, Esperanto
• Polish — ą ć ę ł ń ś ź ż
• Czech — the carons and the ring above ů
• Turkish — including the dotless ı and dotted İ
• Hungarian — including the double acute ő and ű
• Romanian — with the comma-below ș and ț
• Nordic — æ ø å for Danish and Norwegian, ä ö for Swedish and Finnish
• Icelandic — including eth ð and thorn þ
• Vietnamese — horned vowels and the full tone-mark set

Two of these are worth a note, because the wrong character is easy to pick and looks almost identical.

Romanian uses s and t with a comma below (ș, ț), not a cedilla (ş, ţ). They look nearly the same at normal text size but they’re different characters, and Romanian typography treats the cedilla forms as incorrect. This keyboard gives you the comma-below versions.

Turkish has a dotless ı and a dotted İ, and both matter. Lowercasing a Turkish İ gives i, and uppercasing ı gives I — get it wrong and words change meaning. Both are included here.

If you write in this language every day

A copy-paste tool is the right answer for occasional use. If you’re writing a language daily, install its keyboard layout instead — it takes two minutes once and you’ll never look a letter up again.

• Windows — Settings → Time & Language → Language & Region → Add a language. The US International layout is a good middle ground: it keeps the English layout but lets you type an accent followed by a vowel.
• Mac — System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources. macOS also has the hold-a-key trick built in: press and hold a vowel and a popup offers its accented forms.
• iPhone and Android — press and hold any vowel on the keyboard and slide to the accent you want. No setup needed.

For the specific letters, see the complete guide to typing accented letters or browse all accented letter guides.

If the letter doesn’t paste properly

• It shows as an empty box. The font has no drawing for that character. Common with the rarer Vietnamese and Icelandic letters. Switch to Arial, Calibri or Noto Sans.
• It shows as question marks or garbled letters. Something in the chain isn’t using UTF-8 — often an older application, a CSV, or a database field with the wrong encoding.
• The accent sits separately from the letter. You’ve got a combining mark rather than a precomposed character. Everything in this tool is precomposed, so re-copy from here.

See how to fix symbols showing as boxes for the full walkthrough.

Common questions

Can I type in the box as well as clicking?

Yes. It’s an ordinary text field, so you can type normally and click only for the letters your keyboard hasn’t got. Clicking inserts at your cursor, not at the end, so you can build a word in any order.

Do I need to install a keyboard layout?

Not for occasional use — that’s what this tool is for. If you write the language daily, installing the layout is worth the two minutes it takes.

Why does Romanian have two versions of s and t?

Romanian uses s and t with a comma below (ș, ț). A cedilla version (ş, ţ) also exists in Unicode and looks almost identical, but Romanian typography treats it as incorrect. This keyboard gives you the comma-below forms.

What’s the difference between Turkish ı and i?

Turkish has a dotless ı and a dotted i as separate letters, each with its own capital: I for the dotless, İ for the dotted. Swapping them changes the word, so both are included.

Will these work in Word and Google Docs?

Yes. Pasting works everywhere. Word also accepts the hex code followed by Alt+X, and both applications have their own accent shortcuts — the codes shown when you click a letter cover both routes.

Can I use accented letters in an email address or username?

In a display name, usually yes. In an email address or an @handle, usually not — most systems restrict those to unaccented letters, numbers and a few punctuation marks.

The other two tools