Blog ·
How to type German umlauts on a US keyboard
Type ä, ö, ü and ß on an English keyboard on Mac, Windows and Linux, without a German layout and without ae, oe and ue.
German needs four letters that a US keyboard does not have: ä, ö, ü and ß. You can write ae, oe, ue and ss instead, and every German reader understands it, but it looks like a telegram. Here are the ways to type the real letters.
On a Mac
Press and hold. Hold a, o or u, and macOS shows the accented forms with a number under each; the umlaut is among them. Hold s for ß.
Option shortcuts. On the US layout, press Option + U, let go, and type the vowel: ä, ö, ü, and with Shift Ä, Ö, Ü. Option + S types ß. This is the fastest built-in way, once your hand knows it.
On Windows
US-International. Add the United States-International keyboard in Settings → Time & language → Language & region. Then " followed by a vowel types the umlaut, and AltGr + S types ß. The catch: " and ' now wait for the next key, so to type a quote you press space after it. In code, that gets old fast.
Alt codes. Hold Alt and type on the number pad: 0228 ä, 0246 ö, 0252 ü, 0223 ß, and 0196 Ä, 0214 Ö, 0220 Ü.
The German keyboard. The German layout has all four letters, but it is QWERTZ: Y and Z change places, and most punctuation moves.
On Linux
Set a Compose key in your keyboard settings. Then Compose, ", a types ä, and Compose, s, s types ß.
Why none of this feels right
Every way above asks you to stop and think in the middle of a word. Two dots on one letter in three words is a lot of stops in a long email. And a second layout means you type a z where you wanted a y the first time you forget it is on.
Type in English, get German
Typeet does it after the word instead of inside it. Keep the US layout, type madchen, and when you finish the word Typeet writes Mädchen. It checks each word against word lists for German and English and looks at the words around it, so English words stay as they are.
Typeet works in every app, and it runs on your computer, so what you type stays there. If it changes a word you meant to keep, undo it; undo the same word often, and Typeet leaves it alone.