The umlauts and ß on four keys, with shortcuts that work on any English keyboard.
German words to try
Tap a word to put it in the box above, or type it yourself with the keys shown (only the special letters need a shortcut).
| Word | Meaning | Keys |
|---|---|---|
| Beautiful | Alt+O | |
| Street | Alt+S | |
| Bye | Alt+U | |
| Girl | Alt+A | |
| Hello (southern Germany, Austria) | Alt+U Alt+S |
German accent shortcuts
Each accented letter on this keyboard and the shortcut that types it from a US or UK keyboard. Hold Alt on Windows, Linux and ChromeOS, or Option on a Mac. Add Shift for the capital.
| Letter | Capital | Shortcut |
|---|---|---|
| ä | Ä | Alt + A |
| ö | Ö | Alt + O |
| ü | Ü | Alt + U |
| ß | ẞ | Alt + S |
The four extra German letters
German adds three umlauted vowels and one extra consonant to the English alphabet. The umlaut is the two dots over a, o and u, and it changes the vowel sound: ä is close to the e in "bet", ö is like the vowel in French peu, and ü is like the French u. They often mark plurals and other grammatical changes, which is why getting them wrong changes the word: schon means already, schön means beautiful; Mutter is a mother and Mütter is mothers.
ß is called Eszett or scharfes S. It stands for a sharp s sound after a long vowel or a diphthong: Straße, groß, heißen. After a short vowel German writes ss instead: Fluss, muss. Switzerland and Liechtenstein do not use ß at all and always write ss.
The capital ẞ
For most of its history ß had no capital form, and words written in capitals replaced it with SS: STRASSE. A capital ẞ was added to Unicode in 2008, and in 2017 the Council for German Orthography made it an accepted alternative, so STRAẞE is now correct as well as STRASSE. Tap Shift and then the ß key on this keyboard, or press Alt+Shift+S, and you get ẞ rather than two letters.
When you cannot type an umlaut
The standard fallback is to write the vowel followed by e: ae for ä, oe for ö, ue for ü, and ss for ß. Müller becomes Mueller and Straße becomes Strasse. It is correct German and is what most email addresses, domain names and airline tickets use. It is not the same as dropping the dots: Muller is simply a misspelling.
The fallback is fine in a pinch, but it looks careless in a letter, a CV or anything printed, and it breaks alphabetical searches that expect the real letter. That is what this keyboard is for: the right letter in two taps, copied into whatever you are writing.
Typing German on your own device
- Windows: add the "German" keyboard for the full QWERTZ layout, where Y and Z swap and ä, ö, ü and ß have their own keys. If you only need the letters now and then, the United States-International layout gives ä with " then a, and ß with Right Alt+S.
- Mac: Option+U then the vowel types the umlaut, and Option+S types ß. Holding a vowel down also opens the accent menu.
- Phone: hold a, o or u for the umlaut and hold s for ß.
- Alt codes on Windows: with Num Lock on, hold Alt and type on the number pad: 0228 ä, 0246 ö, 0252 ü, 0223 ß, 0196 Ä, 0214 Ö, 0220 Ü.