An Unicode Keyboard Layout Editor For Mac

This was originally posted on my blog, Notes from a Linguistic Mystic in 2007, but is kept updated here for the internet’s use. At this point, it works for any version of Mac OS X up to 10.14 “Mojave”. The last update was May 2019. See all posts

We recently ported our SBBIC Khmer keyboard to Mac. We added a colon symbol (“:” with right ALT+L or OPTION+L on Mac) as well as a dash (“-” with right ALT+D or OPTION +D on Mac). The keyboard is based on the Khmer OS and NiDA keyboard. Unzip the keyboard layout by either simply double clicking. Mac OS X Keyboard Layout Editor U nicode Keyboard for Android Unicode keyboard is a supplementary keyboard that allows you to enter any Unicode 6.0 character or symbol in any active text field.

As a linguist, you find yourself using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) incredibly frequently. Some of the characters are easy enough to use without any special work (ŋ, ə), as most fonts already include them. However, to get the more cool/obscure characters and diacritics, or to stack diacritics (placing, for instance, a tone marking above a nasal marking), you need special fonts, layouts and setup. In this post, I’m going to explain, as simply as possible, how to go about finding the files and setting this up, all without paying a dime for specialty software.

Getting the fonts and layout

The beauty of this method is that it uses software built into Mac OS X, and that you can use IPA fonts in any application that supports Unicode (translation: lots of them), not just specific programs. You also don’t need to install a separate program to clutter up your computer, just a few free fonts and a keyboard layout. So, here’s your freeware shopping list:

Necessary files:

Charis SIL IPA Font - The best free IPA font out there (in my opinion) because it has bold, italic, and all sorts of other characters outside of IPA. The download link is around halfway down the page, grab the file with “(Windows, Macintosh and Linux)” next to it. Thanks to the Summer Institute of Linguistics, it’s completely free!
The Unicode IPA Keyboard Layout for OS X - SIL has created a comprehensive and modern version with every key you can imagine and more at The IPA-SIL key layout site. This layout is excellent as it allows you to type regularly, but by using “deadkeys” (a key that you press before another which chooses the output), you can add any IPA key you’d like. Make sure you have the latest version (1.5, at time of update) installed, as some strange encoding issues were happening with newer OSes and version 1.4.

Citra emulator mac os x. Optional Extra IPA fonts:

Doulos SIL - A differently styled IPA font from SIL, missing the bold and italic forms that Charis has. Install this at the same time you install the Charis SIL font below, using the same instructions.
SILIPA93 Fonts - These are desperately outdated, but occasionally necessary when reading other people’s old IPA. Install this at the same time you install the Charis SIL font below, using the same instructions.

So, download save them to your desktop (or a location of your choosing), and then proceed to the next step.

Power User’s Summary: Download the Charis SIL IPA Font and the IPA-SIL keyboard Layout from the above links and save them someplace you can find them.

Installing the font and keyboard layout

Now, double-click the CharisSIL(version).zip file that you saved to your desktop. It’ll unzip into a similarly named folder on your desktop. Take the CharisSILfontdocumentation.pdf file and move it to a safe place, it’s a handy guide to have around, and feel free to take a look at the readme and license files in the folder.

It’s time to install the font and layout themselves:

If you’re using OS X 10.7 “Lion” or later, Apple has hidden the /Users/yourname/Library (~/Library) folder from you by default. If you’re on Mavericks or later (10.9+), go to your Home folder (/Users/yourname) and then to the “View” menu, then “Show View Options”, then check “Show Library Folder”. Otherwise, you can use “Go” -> “Go to Folder” and type in (~/Library).
Place the four font files from the folder (CharisSILB.ttf, CharisSILBI.ttf, CharisSILI.ttf, CharisSILR.ttf) along with any of the optional fonts you’re installing into the ~/Library/Fonts folder (the “Fonts” folder inside the “Library” folder in your user directory.
Now, the layout. First, Double click “IPA-MACkbd.dmg” on your desktop. Now click the newly opened “Keyboard” Disk Image on the desktop and examine the contents.
Save “IPA Unicode (some version numbers) MAC Keyboard.pdf”! In fact, frame it. Wallpaper your wall with copies of it. Get a version tattooed on your chest. Just make sure you have it. Without this, you’ll have trouble figuring out exactly which keypresses result in which characters, and this method won’t work very well at all.
Now, drag “IPA Unicode (Version) MAC.keylayout” into the “Keyboard Layouts” in your username/Library folder. Also, if there is no “Keyboard Layouts” folder, you might have to create it yourself (File -> New Folder, then name it “Keyboard Layouts”)
You’re done! You might want to restart your computer, then everything will be all set.

Power User’s Summary: Install the font into /Users/you/Library/Fonts, and put the keyboard layout into /Users/you/Library/Keyboard Layouts. Make sure to save “IPA Unicode (version) MAC Keyboard.pdf” from the layout folder someplace accessible. Restart.

Setting up IPA Text Input on OS X 10.6-10.8

Once you’ve restarted, go to the System Preferences Application. Click the “Language and Text” (“International” on older versions), then, click the “Input Sources” (or “Input Menu”) tab inside the Language and Text Pane, and you’ll be presented with a window like this:

In this window, make sure and select “Keyboard & Character Viewer” (to see what symbols are where at a glance) and “Show input menu in menu bar”. Also, feel free to change the shortcut to switch input methods to make things faster for you down the road.

Setting up IPA Text Input on OS X 10.9 or higher

Once you’ve restarted, go to the System Preferences Application. Click the “Keyboard” Option. First, check “Show Keyboard and Character Viewers in the Menu Bar”, then, click the “Input Sources” (or “Input Menu”) tab inside the Keyboard Pane.

Then, click the “+” button in the bottom left of the window, Choose “Others” in the left pane, and then “IPA Unicode 6.2(v.X)”, and check “Show input menu in menu bar”.

Also, feel free to change the shortcut to switch input methods to make things faster for you down the road, under “Shortcuts”.

/hɛloʊ wɜ˞ld/!

Now that you’ve done that, you should have a little American flag in your menu bar. Congratulations! You’re now set up to use the IPA on your mac.

To test it out, fire up any text editor (OpenOffice, TextEdit, or even MS Word, if you insist) and open a document. Be very sure to select Charis SIL for your font in the document.

Now, click the little menu in the menubar and select IPA Unicode (Version) MAC:

Start typing and you’ll find yourself typing IPA symbols! You’ll slowly learn the reasonably intuitive set of key sequences (e.g: > then n for Angma, > then r for Alveolar Tap), and soon, you’ll be typing in IPA nearly effortlessly in nearly any application.

“But I don’t use IPA that often, and can’t memorize the keystrokes!”

Since Mavericks (10.9), Apple has stealthily included another way to input IPA characters which is far less efficient for regular, long-form IPA entry, but good if all you need is the occasional character. To enable this option, first, go through the steps above to get the font and keyboard set up, making extra sure to enable “Show input menu in menu bar”.

Once you’ve done this, go to the little input menu in the menu bar, then click “Show Emoji and Symbols”. To enable IPA, click the Gear in the top left corner of that window, then “Customize List”, then scroll down and check the box for “Phonetic Alphabet”.

Now, you can use that symbol picker menu to insert IPA by clicking “Phonetic Alphabet” and double-clicking the character you’d like. To add diacritics, just click the base character, then the diacritic which modifies it. Again, though, this will only work when you’re using an IPA-friendly font.

Using IPA in the Mac OS X World

With either of these methods, you can use IPA in any application, from email to messages, and it should display fine for any of your linguist friends who have suitable fonts installed.

Download emojis for mac torrent. That said, Microsoft Word, even the latest (2015) version, doesn’t always play nicely with this sort of input. I’d highly recommend that if you have troubles, you try using TextEdit (built in), Pages, or the free Office suite for OS X, LibreOffice, all of which I’ve tried and know to work fairly well. If you’re serious about IPA, though, and want your work to look good, there’s only one approach, which is to use TeX. It’s complicated, with a sharp initial learning curve, but with XeLaTeX (which allows Unicode entry) and this keyboard layout and font, you’ll have absolutely flawless IPA, all with all the numerous other benefits of using TeX.

But the very least, you should be able to copy/paste your IPA text into a word document, or hopefully even make the switch entirely to a better word processor. Although MS Word may be the most well known word processor, it’s far from being the best on OS X, and I highly encourage you to check out all the options.

Regardless, thanks to these free and open source fonts and layouts, you’ll never need to write a Word macro again on OS X. /oʊ, wʌɾə wʌndə˞fl̩ wɜ˞ld/!

Related Articles:

Whether you’re new to Mac or have been using it for years, highly specialized things like shortcuts, special Mac symbols, and accented characters might result in a web investigation spiralling out of control.

If you’ve just recently switched from Windows, you should know that Macs don’t really use alt codes to type special symbols. Instead, all of the most popular Unicode characters can be typed in right from the keyboard. Unfortunately, Apple could do a much better job of shining light at this functionality.

For example, if you want to get a copyright symbol on Windows (©), you need to type in Alt 0169 — whereas, a copyright symbol on Mac is just Option + G. Similarly, a degree symbol on Mac (º) is Option + Zero and a registered trademark symbol on Mac (™) is Option + 2.

Truth is there are many more like this and below we’ll explore different ways of how to type copyright symbol on Mac or any special characters Macs allow, where to find Apple keyboard symbols, and whether there’s an emoji keyboard on Mac.

What Are All The Mac Keyboard Symbols?

While a standard computer keyboard contains around 80 keys, you’re able — in one way or another — use it to input all of the Unicode characters, of which there are about 130,000.

To start, simply explore how all the face-value characters change when you combine them with modifier keys — Control, Option, and Command. You can even combine multiple modifiers together as well. To see all Mac keyboard shortcuts symbols clearly, however, you need to turn on the full keyboard layout.

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Download Setapp to accelerate typing special keyboard symbols on Mac – bypass any limitations right now.

Display all Mac keyboard symbols

Even if you’ve been using your Mac for a while, it’s useful to look at all the possible keyboard combinations from time to time to refresh your memory and discover new ways of quickly inputting information.

Luckily, it’s easy to show all Mac key symbols at once:

Go to System Preferences ➙ Keyboard
Check the box next to “Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar”

Now you can click on the language flag in your menu bar and choose Show Keyboard Viewer. The interactive display will appear, showing all the keyboard symbols and altering the view in real time when you use modifier keys.

Of course, even using all the modifier keys and combinations available, it’s impossible to fit all the characters in such constrained amount of space. To see all Mac key symbols, you need to select Show Emoji & Symbols option from the same language flag menu, or use a shortcut Control + Cmd + Space.

Here, you’ll see all kinds of categories on the left: Emoji, Arrows, Currency Symbols, etc. In the center are all the characters within a given category. And on the right you can pick a font variation of the same symbol.

To type in a TM symbol Macs use, for example:

Open your word processor of choice
Call the Mac symbols menu
Navigate to Letterlike Symbols on the sidebar
Double-click on ™ to paste it into your editor

How to create custom Mac keyboard shortcuts symbols

With the Show Emoji & Symbols window, you have access to nearly all Unicode characters you’ll ever need. However, if you need to use some special characters — such as a copyright symbol on Mac — rather frequently, it would be quite inconvenient to call up a menu and search for what you need every time. Of course, you can add the copyright symbol to your favorite characters, which will save you some time, but there’s a much better way.

Macs allow you to create shortcuts for all keyboard symbols to be able to easily type them in whenever you need. For example, to create a shortcut for the copyright symbol on Mac:

Open System Preferences ➙ Keyboard
Navigate to the Text tab
Click the plus sign
Type in a desired key combination to trigger the copyright symbol on Mac in the Replace column on the left

Although this default shortcuts method works well for characters or emoji, it doesn’t effectively translate into longer strings of text or paragraphs. If you want to, for instance, create a shortcut that outputs a sales email template, you’d need to use a little nifty tool called Rocket Typist.

Rocket Typist is a full-featured text expansion app created to minimize repetition in composing any form of text-based communication. It’s essentially a small database of text snippets you’ll use over and over again.

Starting with Rocket Typist is easy: use File ➙ New to create a new snippet, specify the abbreviation, fill out as much text (sentences or even paragraphs) as you need, and then use the abbreviation to expand text in any application.

How to switch between keyboard languages quickly

Sometimes, the Mac keyboard symbols you need are only available in another language — say, they could be Cyrillic-based. To access them, you’d need to enable another keyboard layout on your Mac.

Luckily, it’s easy to do:

Go to System Preferences ➙ Keyboard
Navigate to Input Sources
Click the plus sign
Choose the language you need and press Add

Now, the second keyboard layout will be activated. Don’t forget to check the box next to “Show Input menu in menu bar” to see which layout is currently active. The standard shortcut to switch between layouts is Cmd + Space, but you can also change it to Caps Lock key in the Input Sources options.

Extra tip: typing emoji on iPhone is much easier if you add an emoji keyboard layout to your languages.

Special Characters: Type in various symbol variations

In some cases, you might just want to access a variation of the symbol that’s already on your keyboard, such as an accented letter.

One way to do this is to find the character of your choice in the Keyboard Viewer, as described above. Another way is to use a keyboard shortcut. You can get an acute accent by typing Option + E and then the letter. Similarly, circumflex is Option + I, grave accent is Option + backquote, tilde is Option + N, and umlaut is Option + U.

A quicker option though is to simply press the key of the letter you want to modify and hold it for a second until a small menu appears. Then just choose a number that corresponds to the modification you seek.

Digitize complex math expressions

If your studies or line of work require the use of complex math, you might be spending too much time crafting LaTeX and MathML expressions by hand. But as with nearly everything else nowadays, there’s an easier way.

MathKey is a Mac app specifically developed to write complex equations in academic papers and math documents. Instead of composing dozens of obscure symbols together, the app allows you to hand-write the equation using your trackpad (or mouse) and output perfect LaTeX or MathML, ready for publication.

Search for anything instantly

It’s likely that you won’t retain all the information provided here. But don’t worry, the only thing you need to keep is a supercharged search that can take you right back to the answer you’re looking for.

Lacona is an intelligent search for your Mac that contextually analyzes the query and outputs a range of possible solutions, whether it’s launching a certain app, looking it up online, or performing a pre-defined action.

Any question about Mac keyboard shortcuts symbols — such as “how to type copyright symbol on Mac?” — would be met with a guiding response. And all you have to do to start Lacona is press Option + Space.

So there are a lot of things your Mac is capable of that you might have not even considered before. With regards to symbols and characters, what you see on the keyboard is just a tiny slice compared to the total amount available. Using Mac symbols properly will enrich your communication, making it clear and efficient, especially if you get used to creating snippets with Rocket Typist, transferring math equations with MathKey, and keeping everything at the tips of your fingers with Lacona.

Best of all, the apps mentioned above are available to you on a free trial through Setapp, a platform of more than 150 specific Mac apps that are designed to make your days more productive and fun. Now you’re ready to solve some equations!