How to type in German (ü, ö, ä, ß)

What does the German keyboard look like? How do I print ü, ö, ä and ß? Can these characters be hidden? The answers to these questions – read the article!

Learning German and trying to communicate with someone in this language, we are faced with the need to type special German characters on the keyboard – umlauts and escet. How can this be done?

The easiest way is to simply replace special characters according to the following rule:

ü = ue
ö = oe
ä = ae
ß = ss

This method is suitable if you do not type very often (although this rule is generally accepted, and all Germans will understand if you write this way).

The second way is copying

If you want to show off excellent German with umlauts, but you don’t want to install the German keyboard layout, then there is one trick. You can go to a German site (for example, dw.de) and copy the necessary characters there directly from the news text.
Again, this method is suitable for those who do not type in German very often.

The third way is to set the German keyboard layout

On Windows, this is done as follows: Windows —> Settings —> Time & Language —> Language —> Add a language —> German (Germany).

And don’t forget that Z and Y are reversed on the German keyboard (this is because Y is rarely used in German).
If you are working on MacOS, then umlauts can be typed even easier: just hold down the A, O, U and S keys on the English layout to enter the umlauts Ä, Ö, Ü and ß, respectively.

The fourth way is tricky

You can put the English layout (USA – international) with the ability to enter all special letters through the right alt:

alt + s = ß
alt + q = ä
alt + y = ü
alt + p = ö

Congratulations! Now you can definitely show off your skills and write these “German emoticons” – umlauts with ease!