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How to type Croatian letters (č ć đ š ž) on an English keyboard

Type Croatian č, ć, đ, š and ž on a US keyboard with Mac, Windows and Linux tools. Compare layouts and shortcuts, and avoid confusing Đ with Ð.

Croatian needs five letters that a US keyboard does not have: č, ć, đ, š and ž, and the capitals Č, Ć, Đ, Š, Ž. The digraphs dž, lj and nj count as single letters in the alphabet, but on a keyboard you type them as two, so they need nothing special.

The usual shortcut is to write c for both č and ć, and dj for đ. Everyone understands Moze li sutra?, but it is not correct Croatian, and kuca is not the same word as kuća. Here are the real ways to type the letters.

On a Mac

Press and hold. Hold a letter key to see the accented forms available in the current app and input source. Choose a letter by clicking it or pressing its number. The menu does not appear in every app and may not contain every letter you need. For a missing letter, use a language layout or Character Viewer.

Option shortcuts. The standard ABC layout does not cover this full set of letters. The ABC - Extended input source offers more marks. Add it in Keyboard settings, then choose Show Keyboard Viewer from the Input menu. Hold Option to see its dead keys, press the key for the mark, then type the letter. Use Character Viewer if the letter is not available.

The Croatian layout. Open System Settings → Keyboard → Text Input → Edit, press +, and add Croatian. Switch between it and your US layout with Control + Space or the globe key if it is set to change input sources. The Croatian layout is QWERTZ, so Y and Z change places, and the five letters take the keys where US has brackets and other punctuation.

For an occasional letter, open Character Viewer with Control + Command + Space. Expand the viewer if needed, search for the letter, and double-click it to insert it.

On Windows

The Croatian keyboard. The Microsoft layout chart shows its keys. Open Settings → Time & language → Language & region, add Croatian or only its keyboard, and switch with Windows + Space. The letters sit where US has [, ], ;, ' and </kbd>: š, đ, č, ć, ž. It is QWERTZ, and the brackets, quotes and most other symbols move to AltGr or Shift. For anyone who also writes code or English, that is a lot of new places to learn.

Alt codes. The leading-zero codes below use Windows-1252, the Western European code page. Results can differ with the system code page. Hold Alt and type a number on the number pad with Num Lock on: 0154 š, 0158 ž, 0138 Š, 0142 Ž. Windows-1252 has no codes of this kind for č, ć and đ. In Microsoft Word you can type the Unicode number and press Alt + X: 010D gives č, 0107 gives ć, 0111 gives đ.

A trap with Đ. Alt + 0208 types Ð. It looks like the Croatian Đ, but it is the Icelandic letter eth, a different character. Search, sorting and spell checkers will not treat it as Đ, and its small form is ð, not đ.

On Linux

GNOME and KDE offer Croatian and Croatian (US). The US variant keeps every US key in its place and adds the letters on AltGr: AltGr + [ š, AltGr + ] đ, AltGr + ; č, AltGr + ' ć, AltGr + </kbd> ž. It is the most comfortable built-in choice on any system.

A Compose key works too: Compose, c, c types č, Compose, ', c types ć, Compose, -, d types đ, Compose, c, s types š, and Compose, c, z types ž.

Why č and ć make it harder

Each method above needs you to know, while you type, which of the two c's a word takes. Native speakers mix them up too, and the difference is often only in the ending: kuci is kući, ides is ideš. With a second layout you also lose your brackets and quotes, and with shortcuts each letter costs two or three keys.

Type without the letters, get Croatian

Typeet takes that choice off your hands. You keep the US layout and type Croatian without the marks. When you finish a word with a space or punctuation, Typeet writes the correct spelling:

Typeet looks up each word in frequency lists for Croatian and for English and picks the most likely spelling, as in liječniku and ću in the first example. When a word could be spelled two ways, the words around it decide. English words, iPhone, camelCase and words with digits stay as they are.

On Croatian test sentences it had not seen before, from the Tatoeba collection, Typeet adds 98.2% of the missing letters, 99.5% of all words come out right, and it leaves 100% of English words alone. It knows 180,886 Croatian words. We also typed Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić's Čudnovate zgode šegrta Hlapića without its letters, 24,385 words, and 98.6% came back right.

When it is wrong, press Backspace right after the fix to undo it. If you undo the same word ten times, Typeet leaves it alone from then on. Option + Backspace on a Mac, or Ctrl + Backspace on Windows and Linux, switches a word to its other spelling.

Typeet works in every app on macOS 13 or later, Windows 10 or later, and Linux. It runs on your own computer and does not store or send what you type. It is free for 14 days, then a one-time purchase of $19.

Questions

How do I type đ on a Mac?

Use Character Viewer to insert đ, or add the Croatian input source. Typeet can also restore it in supported words typed without their special letters.

Is "dj" an acceptable replacement for đ?

People use it when they cannot type đ, and readers understand it. It is not the correct spelling, and it breaks search for names such as Đurđević.

Is there an Alt code for č or ć?

Not with the standard Windows-1252 codes. On that code page, of the letters listed in this post, the Alt + number pad codes cover only š and ž. In Word, type 010D for č or 0107 for ć and press Alt + X.

Can I use the Croatian keyboard for Bosnian, Serbian Latin or Slovenian?

The letters are the same, so the Croatian layout types all of them. Windows also has a Slovenian keyboard with the same letters.