macOS: Accented Letters Are Surprisingly Easy to Type

For many United States Mac users who communicate with the international community, typing accented letters can create a great deal of concern. More than a few think it’s necessary to type in special codes to insert the characters, but the truth is that it’s actually much easier than that. Several years ago, our own Melissa Holt showed us how to find the special characters and accented letters in OS X Mountain Lion using the Character Viewer, but that tool has changed names since then. Let’s take a look at the easiest way to type accented letters, and also brush up on where that viewer is located now.

Typing accented letters is actually pretty easy in macOS Sierra (Image Credit: stokpic)

Typing Accented Letters Without a Viewer

The first, and easiest way, to get to those accented letters is to just hold down the appropriate key. For example, if I wanted to type ‘à,’ I would hold down the letter ‘a’ on my keyboard for a couple of seconds. A menu will then pop up above your cursor with the available options for that character. You can choose the right one with your mouse, or simply press the number listed under the correct accented letter.

Sending a tweet, or typing any other text, with accented letters is easy in macOS Sierra

What If I Just Get Repeated Letters?

If you never see the pop-up menu and instead get repeated characters from your long keypress, chances are you’ve changed the keypress behavior. You likely did so with this command in the Terminal app:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

If you want to enable the accented characters pop-up, you’ll have to reverse that command. Do so by opening the Terminal app again, and entering this command:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

I’d Rather Just Use the Keyboard Viewer, So How Do I Do That?

If you’d prefer to find your accented characters with the Keyboard Viewer, you’ll have to enable it, assuming you haven’t already done so. To turn the Keyboard Viewer on in your menu bar, start off by going to System Preferences, and clicking Keyboard.

To enable the Keyboard Viewer, start off in the Keyboard pane of System Preferences

From the Keyboard tab, make sure Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar is checked. Once you’ve done that, you can close System Preferences.

Make sure Show keyboard and emoji viewers is checked

A new icon will have appeared in your menu bar, usually right beside your username. The icon looks vaguely like a keyboard dominated by the ⌘ symbol. Click on that icon, then click Show Keyboard Viewer.

Accessing the Keyboard Viewer after it’s enabled just takes a click

Now you should see a keyboard on your screen. If you press the Option key, Command key, or other keypress combinations, you’ll see accents and other options for your keyboard.

The Keyboard Viewer shows you which key combinations to use for various accented letters and symbols

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