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title, description, source, crawled
| title | description | source | crawled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-German Keyboards | How to type German special characters (Ä, Ö, Ü, ß, and German quotation marks) on Mac and Windows keyboards — keyboard shortcuts and alt codes. | https://germanforenglishspeakers.com/non-german-keyboards | 2026-06-30 |
Non-German Keyboards
Here's how to type the "extra" German characters on a non-German keyboard, with a few more notes below for Windows users:
| Character | Mac | Windows (all versions) | Windows 7 (sometimes) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ä/ä | Option-U, then A or a | Alt-0196 (capital) or Alt-0228 (lowercase) | Control-colon (control+shift+;), then A or a |
| Ö/ö | Option-U, then O or o | Alt-0214 or Alt-0246 | Control-colon, then O or o |
| Ü/ü | Option-U, then U or u | Alt-0220 or Alt-0252 | Control-colon, then U or u |
| ß | Option-S | Alt-0223 | Control-& (control-shift-7) |
| German quotes, single (‚') | Alt-8218 (open) or Alt-8216 (close) | ||
| German quotes, double („") | Alt-8222 (open) or Alt-8220 (close) | ||
| "Chevron" quotes, single (‹›,›‹) | Shift-Alt-3 and -4 | Alt-8249 and Alt-8250 | |
| "Chevron" quotes, double («»,»«) | Alt-0171 and Alt-0187 |
Those Windows shortcuts in the middle column usually have to be entered on the numeric keypad, and sometimes it has to be the left Alt key, not the right one. As for the Windows 7 shortcuts, we put "sometimes" because they're unpredictable -- they tend to work only in certain installations of Windows, or in Word but not a web form, etc.
To be honest, the whole process on Windows is so annoying that most users who have to type any serious amount of German text will be better off just switching their keyboard layout. This may interfere with a few other keyboard shortcuts (especially the ones with the right-hand Alt key) but it's usually worth it.
Of the default layouts, the "US-International" one is a good alternative to "German," because it keeps most of the letters and basic punctuation in the same places and uses alt-key combos for the umlaut vowels.