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French keyboard with accents

Type normally on your keyboard; AltGr (or Alt) + a letter gives its variant (e.g. e → é).

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Long-press a key for variants (e.g. e → é è ê).

This online French keyboard adds the accented letters your QWERTY or AZERTY keyboard is missing: é, è, ê, à, ç, œ and capitals such as É and À. Your keys keep typing as usual, while AltGr, long-press and the character panels supply everything else.

How to use

  1. Set Physical keyboard to QWERTY or AZERTY so the shortcuts match the letters printed on your keys.
  2. Type normally: plain letters, digits and punctuation come straight from your own keyboard.
  3. For an accented letter, hold AltGr or Alt (Option on a Mac) and press the base letter: E for é, R for è, A for à, C for ç.
  4. Hold Shift as well to get a capital, so AltGr+Shift+E gives É.
  5. With a finger or the mouse, press and hold any key that shows a dot, such as e or c, then pick the variant you need.
  6. Tap Copy and paste your French text wherever you need it.

An online French keyboard for QWERTY users

English laptops and most keyboards sold outside France, Belgium and Switzerland have no key for é, à or ç. Students, travellers and anyone writing to a French office or school run into this problem quickly. This page solves it without touching your system settings: the keyboard you already own keeps working, and the site only steps in when you press AltGr or Alt together with a letter.

AltGr shortcuts for French accented letters

Every shortcut follows the letter printed on your key, so it works the same way on QWERTY and AZERTY once Physical keyboard is set correctly. Add Shift for the capital.

Hold AltGr and press Small letter Capital
E é É
R è È
T ê Ê
A à À
Q â Â
U, H, G ù, û, ü Ù, Û, Ü
I, J î, ï Î, Ï
O ô Ô
P œ Œ
C ç Ç
K ë Ë
Z, Y æ, ÿ Æ, Ÿ

While you hold AltGr, the screen keyboard shows the accented letter on each key, which helps while you learn the combinations. If you normally use a French AZERTY keyboard on Windows, note that AltGr+E types é here instead of the € sign; the euro sign is in the Typography panel and in the long-press menu of e.

Capitals, quotation marks and French spacing

The Accented capitals panel collects É, È, À, Ç, Œ and the rest in one place, handy for names such as Élodie or for headings in capitals. The Typography panel holds the marks that make a French text look right: « », the curly apostrophe ’, the ellipsis …, en and em dashes, the degree sign °, the numero sign № and English quotes “ ”. It also includes the two invisible spaces French needs around punctuation, shown as NNBSP and NBSP.

When your text is finished, copy it, download it as a .txt file or a PNG image, or share it by WhatsApp or e-mail. Your text stays in your browser and is never uploaded. For Spanish, the Spanish keyboard works the same way with ñ, ¿ and ¡, and the Arabic keyboard helps if you also write in Arabic.

Frequently asked questions

How do I type French accents on an English keyboard?
On this page, hold AltGr or Alt and press the plain letter: E gives é, R gives è, T gives ê, A gives à, U gives ù and C gives ç. There is no need to add French to your computer's language settings, because the page inserts the accents itself.
How do I type a c with a cedilla (ç)?
Press AltGr+C for ç, or AltGr+Shift+C for the capital Ç. On a touch screen, long-press c. The cedilla tells you that the c is pronounced like an s, as in français or garçon.
What is the difference between é, è and ê in French?
They are three accents on the same letter: acute é (café), grave è (très) and circumflex ê (forêt). The é has a closed sound, while è and ê sound more open, and each word takes one specific accent. On this keyboard they sit on AltGr+E, AltGr+R and AltGr+T.
How do I type the French œ ligature?
Use AltGr+P for œ and AltGr+Shift+P for Œ, or long-press o on the screen keyboard. Careful French writes œuf and sœur with the ligature; oe is a common shortcut online but not the correct spelling.
How do I type French quotation marks (« »)?
Long-press the " key on the screen keyboard or open the Typography panel to insert « and ». French puts a non-breaking space just inside the marks, as in « Bonjour », and that space is in the same panel under the label NBSP.
Why do French texts have a space before question marks?
French typography places a thin non-breaking space before semicolons, exclamation marks and question marks, and a regular non-breaking space before a colon. The Typography panel offers both, labelled NNBSP and NBSP, so the punctuation mark never ends up alone at the start of a line.

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Updated October 7, 2026