How to type German and Spanish characters

<2023-02-08 Wed>

Now, I am learning Español(Spanish) and Deutsch(German). There are many special characters in these two languages, like accents and umlauts. So I spent a little time to find out how to type these characters on all my computers, and below are what I've gotten.

Windows

I use Windows 11. First I setup the keyboard layout to use my right Alt key as a Alt Gr key:

Start -> Settings -> Time & Language -> Language -> Preferred Language -> Click on "English" (click "add a language" if there's no English in the list) -> Click "Options" on the "English" item -> Click "Add a keyboard" then select United States - International.

After I've done that, I got an ENG-INTL input method. By switching to this input method, I can do:

To insert ß, press RAlt+s
For umlauts, e.g. ü, press " u
For accents, e.g. á, press ' a
For ñ, press Shift+~ n
For ¿, press RAlt+/
For ¡, press RAlt+1
For ', ", and ~, press the responding key then press Space

Linux

Run setxkbmap -layout us -option compose:ralt to set the Right Alt key as the compose key, then:

To insert ß, press RAlt s s
For umlauts, e.g. ü, press RAlt " u or RAlt+" u
For accents, e.g. á, press RAlt ' a or RAlt+' a
For ñ, press RAlt Shift+~ n or RAlt+Shift+~ n
For ¿, press RAlt ? ?
For ¡, press RAlt ! !

macOS

To insert ß, press Option+s
For umlauts, e.g. ä, press Option+u a
For accents, e.g. á, press Option+e a
For ñ, press Option+n n
For ¿, press Option+?, i.e. Option+Shift+/
For ¡, press Option+1