How to Type German Accents
The 7 characters German uses, each one to copy, and the keyboard sequence that types it without copying.
German
7 7 with a Windows shortcut that worksHow to type German accents on a keyboard
Of the 7 characters on this page, 7 can be typed on a Mac's default ABC layout. On Windows, 6 have a Word and Outlook shortcut and 7 have an Alt code that works anywhere, which is the route when the keyboard has a numeric keypad.
A dead key is pressed and released before the letter, so it looks like nothing happened until you type the vowel. One row here is one rule: learn the acute and every acute letter follows.
| Mark | Example | Mac | Word and Outlook |
|---|---|---|---|
| a diaeresis | ä | Option + U, then a | Ctrl + Shift + :, then a |
| sharp s | ß | Option + S | — |
Mac sequences are read off the layouts this machine runs, with UCKeyTranslate. The Word column is Microsoft's own table for Word and Outlook, not a Windows-wide shortcut.
German has three umlauted vowels, ä, ö and ü, and the sharp s, ß. The umlaut is not decoration: it changes the word, as in Mutter and Mütter. Where a keyboard cannot produce them the standard substitution is ae, oe, ue and ss, which is why a German web address often reads muenchen rather than münchen. ß gained an official capital form, ẞ, in 2008, and it never begins a word, so the capital is only ever needed when a whole word is set in capitals.
This group holds 7 characters. They run from U+00C4 to U+00FC, close enough together to share a neighbourhood but not a single contiguous run. They are drawn from Latin-1 Supplement (7) in the Unicode Standard, which is what decides how each one is encoded and how software sorts and compares it.
German needs one mark and one only, the a diaeresis, which it shares with French and Spanish. That is why this is the shortest set on the site and the easiest to learn by keyboard rather than by lookup.
All 7 come from Latin-1 Supplement: the accented letters and common signs Western European languages needed. A block is an address rather than a category, and this group is drawn from that block alone.
Every one of them has a Windows Alt code that works on any keyboard with a numeric keypad.
Of the 7, 4 have a Mac shortcut of their own. Everything else in this drawer is reached by copying it or by its codepoint, which works in every application on every system.
Every character below copies with one click. Each one also has a guide page with its Windows, Mac and HTML route written out.
Other languages
French (32)
32 characters, and the a diaeresis as well.
Spanish (14)
14 characters, and the a diaeresis as well.
Czech (30)
30 characters, from elsewhere in Unicode.
Portuguese (24)
24 characters, from elsewhere in Unicode.
Polish (18)
18 characters, from elsewhere in Unicode.