Working with international startups I often find myself having to deal with diacritics, umlauts and friends on a keyboard with a US layout (particularly a US QWERTY Apple keyboard). Here’s my personal cheat sheet:
| Character | Digraph | Key Combination (macOS) |
|---|---|---|
| ä | ae | option + u followed by a |
| Ä | Ae | option + u followed by shift + a |
| ö | oe | option + u followed by o |
| Ö | Oe | option + u followed by shift + o |
| ü | ue | option + u followed by u |
| Ü | Ue | option + u followed by shift + u |
| ß | sz | option + s |
| æ | ae | option + ' (apostrophe key) |
| Æ | Ae | option + shift + ' (apostrophe key) |
| ø | oe | option + o |
| Ø | Oe | option + shift + o |
| å | aa | option + a |
| Å | Aa | option + shift + a |
| € | option + shift + 2 | |
| — (em dash) | option + shift + - (minus) |
Of course this isn’t supposed to be a complete list of all non-ASCII characters and their key combinations on all different OSs, but it certainly helps me to remember — maybe it’s usefull for you as well.
Another key combination I couldn’t live without brings up the emoji picker. Just position your cursor anywhere you’d like to insert an emoji, press command + control + space and voilà!
