How to type accents on a Chromebook

Chromebooks have no numeric keypad, no Character Map and no Alt codes, which makes people assume accents are hard on ChromeOS. They are not. There are two solid methods, one that needs no setup and one that is worth five minutes of setup if you type accents regularly. Both are checked here against the actual input definitions ChromeOS uses rather than against other how-to pages.

Method 1: Ctrl+Shift+U and a Unicode number

This works in any text field on ChromeOS, including the address bar, Gmail and Google Docs.

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+U together, then release all three keys. A small underlined u appears.
2. Type the hex code for the character.
3. Press Space or Enter.

That is it. The code replaces the underlined placeholder. Codes are not case sensitive, and leading zeros are optional in this method.

Character	Code	Character	Code
é	e9	ñ	f1
è	e8	ç	e7
ê	ea	ü	fc
ë	eb	ö	f6
á	e1	ä	e4

Character	Code	Character	Code
ø	f8	ł	142
å	e5	ą	105
æ	e6	č	10d
œ	153	ő	151
ß	df	ğ	11f

Capitals use their own codes: É is c9, Ñ is d1, Ü is dc and Ç is c7. Punctuation follows the same pattern, so ¿ is bf, ¡ is a1 and the euro is 20ac.

The method is worth learning for the two or three characters you need most. Nobody memorises a hundred of them, and that is fine.

Method 2: the US International keyboard

If you write in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese or Italian on a regular basis, add this layout and stop typing codes.

Open Settings, then Languages and inputs, then Inputs. Choose Add input methods, search for US International keyboard, tick it and click Add. Switch between layouts from the input method indicator in the status area at the bottom right of the screen.

The layout turns five punctuation keys into dead keys. Press the key, release it, then press the letter.

Dead key	Then a letter	You get
'	a e i o u y	á é í ó ú ý
"	a e i o u y	ä ë ï ö ü ÿ
backtick	a e i o u	à è ì ò ù
~	a o n	ã õ ñ
^	a e i o u	â ê î ô û

Hold Shift on the letter for the capital, so ' followed by Shift+E gives É. Press a dead key followed by Space to get the plain punctuation mark instead.

The layout also loads a second set of characters onto the right Alt key, which acts as AltGr here.

Combination	Result	Combination	Result
AltGr+E	é	AltGr+S	ß
AltGr+A	á	AltGr+L	ø
AltGr+N	ñ	AltGr+W	å
AltGr+Q	ä	AltGr+Z	æ
AltGr+P	ö	AltGr+K	œ
AltGr+Y	ü	AltGr+/	¿
AltGr+U	ú	AltGr+5	the euro
AltGr+I	í	AltGr+1	¡
AltGr+O	ó	AltGr+comma	ç

Add Shift to any of these for the capital, so Shift+AltGr+N gives Ñ.

The one adjustment to make is that the apostrophe and quote keys now wait for a vowel. Typing “it’s” gives you “itś” unless you press Space after the apostrophe, or type the apostrophe before a consonant. Many people who hit this switch to the variant that keeps the dead keys behind AltGr instead, which leaves plain punctuation alone. The US International keyboard layout explained covers both variants and the habits that make them painless.

Letters with no code you want to remember

Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Turkish and Romanian letters all have Unicode codes, but there are a lot of them. Rather than memorising, add that language’s input method in the same Inputs panel. ChromeOS ships layouts for Polish, Czech, Turkish, Romanian and Hungarian among many others, and each one puts the language’s letters where a native typist expects them. For occasional use, copy the character from Accent Letter instead.

Inside Google Docs, Slides and Sheets

Everything above works inside Docs because ChromeOS composes the character before the browser sees it. Docs also has its own picker, which is useful when you do not know the code.

Click Insert, then Symbols, then Special characters. You can browse by category, type a name such as “e acute”, enter the Unicode value such as 00E9, or draw the character with the mouse in the box on the right. Click a result to insert it.

Two caveats. There is no accent shortcut built into Docs itself, so Ctrl+' does nothing there; the shortcuts you may know from Word are a Word feature. And the special characters dialogue is not available in Google Sheets, so the usual workaround is to insert into a Doc and copy across, or use the Ctrl+Shift+U method directly in the cell. More detail in How to type accents in Google Docs.

Related guides

If you also use a Windows machine, How to type accents on Windows (Alt codes and layouts) covers the Alt code system, which needs a numeric keypad with Num Lock switched on, and Alt codes for accented letters: the complete verified list has the full list. How to type accents on a Mac (Option key and press-and-hold) covers the Option key method, and How to type accents on Linux (Compose key) covers the Compose key, which is the nicest of all these systems and worth reading even if you only use a Chromebook. For phones, see How to type accents on iPhone and iPad and How to type accents on Android (Gboard and Samsung). Developers writing HTML on a Chromebook should use HTML entity, Unicode and CSS codes for accented letters, and Remove accents from text will strip accents out of a block of text when you need plain ASCII.