How do I type characters from foreign languages?

For some simple accents and variants of the basic Latin alphabet it is very easy. The steps below will tell you how to see which characters are easy to type with your keyboard.

1. Activate the Keyboard Viewer. (System Preferences > International > Input Menu. Check the checkbox before Keyboard Viewer.)

2. In the flag menu in the upper right corner of the screen, choose Show Keyboard Viewer .



The Keyboard Viewer shows what character will be printed when you use a specific key combination.

3. Hold down a modifier key, like "alt" (⌥).



All accents that are available using "alt" with that keyboard layout are highlighted in orange. In the picture above, I am using U.S. Extended as keyboard layout, but you may have another one.

4. Now press one of the keys that were highlighted in orange, like "e" (acute accent ´ in the picture).



You now see all characters that take an acute accent with this keyboard layout. To type for example á, you would consequently first hold down ⌥ at the same time as you type e, and then press the a-key.


Chances are the characters you want are available with your standard keyboard. Following the steps above you can tell if that is the case.

To learn more about which languages and language features are supported, go to this page.

For instructions for most languages of the world, see the excellent page Unleash Your Multilingual Mac.