How to Type Pinyin in Windows 10 and 11
As I have been learning Mandarin over the last several years, I’ve been looking for a good method to type Pinyin, which is how Anglos “spell” Chinese words using the English (well, Latin) alphabet and tonal marks. To my utter surprise, there is not a single stock keyboard in the Language Options settings of Windows 10 that is good for that purpose. So I created my own, which I dubbed the United States-International+Pinyin keyboard.
This keyboard is very similar to Microsoft’s United States-International keyboard which uses dead keys to create accent marks over vowels for languages such as Spanish and French. The main difference in my keyboard is that it adds a couple more dead keys so that you can type vowels with a high tonal mark over them (e.g., ā,ē,ī,ō,ū,ǖ), and a falling-rising tonal mark (e.g., ǎ,ě,ǐ,ǒ,ǔ,ǚ).
As I frequently type in English, French, Spanish, and Pinyin, this above keyboard is very useful and is the only one I’ve been using on Windows 10 and Windows 11 since early 2019. To use it as your primary keyboard, there is a slight learning curve because if you need to type one of the characters that is a dead key (i.e., ‘, `, -, =,~), you need to remember to press [space] after pressing the key. Eventually it becomes second-nature.
Instructions on how to install the keyboard is as follows.
Installing the United States-International+Pinyin keyboard
- Download the United States-International+Pinyin keyboard from my website: US_International+Pinyin_keyboard_v2.zip
You can usually do this by either clicking on the link above, or by right-clicking the link and then selecting Save as. - Unzip the file (right-click on it and click extract all).
- In the extracted folder, open setup.exe. Windows Defender Smartscreen may give you a warning saying that it “prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk.” If that’s the case, click on More info, and then Run anyway.
- If successful, you should get a message window saying Installation Complete.
The message window you will get after successful installation of the United States-International+Pinyin keyboard for Windows 10.
I recommend rebooting Windows afterwards.
To select (activate) the keyboard, click on the language icon (circled in yellow below) in the Windows system tray, and then select the United States-International+Pinyin keyboard.

How to Type Pinyin and Accented Characters
Below are the keystrokes needed to type Pinyin, and also accented characters for French and Spanish.
Pinyin Characters
ā,ē,ī,ō,ū,ǖ = [-] [vowel] (i.e., press the minus button and then the vowel)
á,é,í,ó,ú.ǘ = [‘] [vowel]
ǎ,ě,ǐ,ǒ,ǔ,ǚ = [=] [vowel]
à,è,ì,ò,ù,ǜ = [`] [vowel]
ü = [ctrl] + [alt] + [u]. So ǖ = [-] {[ctrl] + [alt] + [u]}
Special Characters for French, Spanish, and Other Languages
To type accented characters for French, Spanish, and other languages, the keystrokes are the same as for Microsoft’s standard United States-International keyboard.
á,é,í,ó,ú = [‘] [vowel]
à,è,ì,ò,ù = [`] [vowel]
ñ = [~] [n]
ç = [‘] [c]
¿ = [ctrl] + [alt] + [/] (Press [ctrl], [alt], and [/] simultaneously. Note that [/] is the same key as [?] except you don’t need to press shift, making it easy to remember.)
¡ = [ctrl] + [alt] + [1] (Press [ctrl], [alt], and [/] simultaneously. Note that [1] is the same key as [!] except you don’t need to press shift, making it easy to remember.)
Typing ‘, `, ~, -, =
‘ = [‘] + [space]
‘ = [‘] + [space]
~ = [~] + [space]
– = [-] + [space]
= = [=] + [space]
Uninstalling the United States-International+Pinyin keyboard
If you try the keyboard and decide you don’t like it or need it, you can uninstall it as follows.
Using the same installation Zip archive you previously downloaded from this page, open setup.exe. You will get the following dialog box:

Select Remove the keyboard layout, and then Finish. Reboot the computer.
How to Type Chinese Characters instead of Pinyin
The above instructions are for typing Pinyin and accents for Latin-based languages only.
If you want to type Chinese characters instead of Pinyin in Windows 10 or 11, follow the instructions in the video below.
Release Notes
Version 1 (released November 30, 2019): US_International+Pinyin_keyboard.zip
- If you had installed this keyboard prior to the release of Version 2, you can download the above Zip file to uninstall the keyboard. (Procedure: uncompress the Zip file, open the extracted folder, run setup.exe, select Remove the keyboard layout, then Finish, and reboot the computer).
- Install Version 2 instead below.
Version 2 (released November 16, 2021): US_International+Pinyin_keyboard_v2.zip
- Version 1 was incorrectly displaying the second tone for the letters a and o as ă and ŏ instead of ǎ and ǒ. Version 2 corrects this; i.e., it uses a caron instead of a rounded breve for those letters. Thanks to reader Pong for discovering this error!

There are 17 comments.
Thank you for sharing your modified version of the international keyboard! I was typing in French but need pinyin now that I am learning Mandarin Chinese. This is so helpful!
Hi Vicky, it's so nice to hear from someone who has to type in English, French, and Pinyin. Thanks for your note. I suppose there's not too many of us!
Love the keyboard! It was so easy to download and use! thanks a bunch Felix Wong, you're doing God's work! :)
Haha, thanks Derek! I'm really glad you found the keyboard useful and are liking it!
Hi Felix, I'm really grateful to have discovered this pinyin input tool, it's something I've been searching for ages. However I'd just like to flag up that the keyboard now gives ?? and ?? which have the breve accent, whereas it should really be ?? and ?? with the caron accent, like the other vowels. Would it be possible to fix it so the keyboard is perfect? Thank you ever so much.
The comment didn't come out properly - it is Aa and Oo that came with the breve rather than the caron. Thank you again.
Hi Pong! Thanks for your message; it makes me happy that someone else is using the keyboard I created!
Your comment made me realize that the accented characters did not show up correctly in the comments section of my website. I had to change the collation of the comments database to utf8mb4_unicode_ci using PHPMyAdmin (I realize almost no one will understand what I am talking about; this is more of a note to myself as to how I fixed it). So now if you were to try to submit a comment on my site with accented characters, they should show correctly.
However, I cannot replicate your issue of my keyboard pack not producing the characters described in my article. It is working perfectly for me:
` + A gets you an À
` + a gets you an À
= + A gets you an Ă
= + a gets you an ă
So I'm not sure why it is not working on your computer. If you ever figure it out, please let me know!
Hi Felix. What I mean is:
= + A should be Ǎ (Unicode U+01CD), but now it is Ă (U+0102)
= + a should be ǎ (Unicode U+01CE), rather than ă (Unicode U+0103)
= + O should be Ǒ (Unicode U+01D1), rather than Ŏ (U+014E)
= + o should be ǒ (Unicode U+01D2), rather than ŏ (Unicode U+010F)
This is because the third tone in pinyin is marked with a caron (ˇ), not a rounded breve (˘). The keyboard now renders the other vowels Ee, Ii, Uu and Üü correctly.
Thank you so much!
Pong, thanks for the clarification and discovering the error in the first place! Funny how I've been using the keyboard for two years and didn't notice it was using a rounded breve instead of a caron for those letters.
I have released Version 2 of the keyboard now so that it correctly displays Ǎ, Ǒ, ǎ, and ǒ now. Download Version 1 (in the Release Notes section above) to uninstall the old keyboard on your computer, and then download Version 2 to install the new keyboard.
That is amazing! Thank you again Felix for creating this.
YOU ARE THE MAN!!! Thanks for your great effort. Was looking for such a simple solution all along. Thumbs up!
Hi Felix,
Thanks for your sharing.
It is working in Windows 11 with my laptop.
Thanks for confirming that it is working on your laptop with Windows 11!
Could you go into detail how you created the keyboard? Those few more deadkeys seem like something I could do myself if pointed in the right direction. Plus is that you can do that on a work laptop as well where you are usually not allowed to install random stuff.
Thanks a lot if you do!
Hi Tobias. I created the keyboard using the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. You can download it and create your own keyboard too.
Good luck!
Hey Felix -
Thanks so much for your solution -works great on Windows 11.
I wanted to let you know that I posted your solution on Microsoft Community
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/pinyin-keyboard-for-windows-11/fc0557e9-5b3f-4c52-a257-6001dcff996a?rtAction=1693098392573
Thank you, Howard, for posting it on Microsoft's site! Cheers!