How to type accents on a Mac (Option key and press-and-hold)

macOS is the friendliest of the desktop systems for accents, because it gives you two complete methods that need no setup at all. Everything below refers to the standard US or ABC keyboard layout that ships with a Mac in an English-speaking country, and every combination has been checked against Apple’s documentation and the layout files macOS actually uses.

The five Option dead keys

A dead key produces nothing on its own. You press it, release it, then press a letter, and the two combine. macOS puts the five common accents on five Option combinations.

Press this	Then a letter	You get
Option+E	a e i o u	á é í ó ú
Option and the backtick key	a e i o u	à è ì ò ù
Option+I	a e i o u	â ê î ô û
Option+N	a n o	ã ñ õ
Option+U	a e i o u y	ä ë ï ö ü ÿ

So é is Option+E followed by e, and ñ is Option+N followed by n.

Capitals work by holding Shift on the second keystroke only. Option+E then Shift+A gives Á. Caps Lock also works for that second key. Pressing a dead key followed by Space gives you the bare accent as a standalone mark.

One thing to know: on the plain US layout the acute dead key only covers the five vowels. Option+E then y does not produce ý. Use Option+U then y for ÿ, or switch to ABC Extended for ý.

Letters that sit directly on Option keys

These do not need a second keystroke. Hold Shift with Option for the capital.

Character	Keys	Capital
ç	Option+C	Shift+Option+C
ø	Option+O	Shift+Option+O
å	Option+A	Shift+Option+A
æ	Option+'	Shift+Option+'
œ	Option+Q	Shift+Option+Q
ß	Option+S	no capital on this layout
¿	Shift+Option+/
¡	Option+1

Useful neighbours on the same keys: Option+G gives the copyright sign, Option+R the registered sign, Option+2 the trademark sign, Shift+Option+2 the euro, Option+3 the pound and Option+4 the cent.

Press and hold: the method nobody has to learn

Hold a letter key down and macOS opens a small menu of its accented forms. Type the number shown under the one you want, or click it, or use the arrow keys and Space. Hold Shift or switch on Caps Lock first for capitals.

Only eleven letters have a menu on the English keyboard. Here is exactly what each one offers, in the order macOS shows them.

Hold	Variants offered
a	à á â ä æ ã å ā
e	é ë ê è ē ė ę
i	î ï í ī į ì
o	ô ö ò ó œ ø ō õ
u	û ü ù ú ū
c	ç ć č
n	ñ ń
s	ß ś š
y	ÿ
z	ž ź ż
l	ł

The other fifteen letters (b, d, f, g, h, j, k, m, p, q, r, t, v, w, x) have no menu, so the key simply repeats. That means press-and-hold covers most of what Polish and Czech need for vowels and sibilants but misses ě, ř, ů, the Hungarian ő and ű, the Turkish ğ and the Romanian ș.

If holding a key just repeats the letter when you expected a menu, check that Key Repeat is not set to Off in System Settings under Keyboard. Some apps, particularly code editors and terminals, turn the feature off on purpose.

ABC Extended: the layout for everything else

ABC Extended is the same keyboard with far more dead keys bolted on. Apple describes it as the layout for typing marks from Czech, French, German, Hungarian and Polish. Add it under System Settings, then Keyboard, then Text Input, then Edit, then the plus button, then English, then ABC Extended. Switch input sources with Control+Space or from the menu bar.

Dead key	Diacritic	Examples
Option+L	stroke	ł đ ħ ŧ
Option+M	ogonek	ą ę į ų
Option+V	caron	č š ž ě ř ď ť ň
Option+J	double acute	ő ű
Option+B	breve	ă ĕ ğ ĭ ŏ ŭ
Option+C	cedilla	ç ş ţ ģ ķ ļ ņ
Option+K	ring above	å ů
Option+A	macron	ā ē ī ō
Option+W	dot above	ż ė ċ ġ and the dotless ı
Option+P	comma below	ș ț
Option+I	horn	ơ ư
Option+E	acute (extended)	ć ń ś ź ý as well as the vowels

Three keys change meaning on this layout, so watch out: Option+6 is now the circumflex instead of Option+I, Option+C is the cedilla dead key so ç becomes Option+C then c, and å moves to Option+K then a because Option+A is now the macron. ø, ß, æ and œ stay where they were.

Unicode Hex Input

If you know a character’s Unicode number, this is the fastest route of all. Add Unicode Hex Input the same way you added ABC Extended; it is filed under Others at the bottom of the list. Switch to it, then hold Option and type the four hex digits.

Option plus 00E9 gives é. Option plus 0142 gives ł. Option plus 20AC gives the euro. Codes shorter than four digits need leading zeros, so the degree sign is 00B0, never B0. While this input source is active the normal Option shortcuts are unavailable, so switch back to ABC afterwards.

Character Viewer and Keyboard Viewer

Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, or choose Edit then Emoji and Symbols. Search by name (“latin small letter e with acute”) or by code (“00E9”), then click to insert. Expand the window for the full sidebar with Latin, Punctuation and Currency categories, and add anything you use often to Favourites.

The Keyboard Viewer is the companion tool. Open it from the Input menu, then hold Option. Any key with an orange outline is a dead key, which is a quick way to see what a layout you have just installed can do.

For characters you type constantly but that have no shortcut, System Settings then Keyboard then Text Replacements lets you map something like ;;l to ł, and it syncs to your iPhone and iPad.

Microsoft Word and Google Docs on a Mac

All of the above works inside Word for Mac, because macOS composes the character before the app ever sees it. The Windows-only Ctrl+' style shortcuts do not exist on the Mac, and neither does Alt+X. One Word-specific trap: Shift+Option and the minus key produces a nonbreaking hyphen inside Word rather than the system em dash. Google Docs behaves the same as any other app, and its own Insert then Symbols then Special characters dialogue is there when you need something exotic. See How to type accents in Microsoft Word (shortcuts and Alt+X) and How to type accents in Google Docs.

Related guides

The Windows equivalents of everything here are in How to type accents on Windows (Alt codes and layouts), with the code list in Alt codes for accented letters: the complete verified list. If you move between a Mac and a PC, The US International keyboard layout explained explains the layout that makes the two feel most alike. iPhone and iPad share the press-and-hold behaviour and the Option combinations with a hardware keyboard; see How to type accents on iPhone and iPad. For Spanish, French and German the per-language pages list exactly which letters you need, Acute, grave, circumflex, tilde, umlaut: the difference covers what each mark is called, and Remove accents from text strips accents out of text when a system will not accept them.