French Keyboard OnlineClavier français

Every French accent, the capitals É À Ç that AZERTY hides behind Caps Lock, œ for cœur and « » quotes, on the familiar AZERTY layout.

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# Special Characters
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Ready-Made French Combos

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How To Use

Three steps. Ten seconds.

Type

Type

Type on your own keyboard in the AZERTY layout, where é, è, ç and à sit on the 2, 7, 9 and 0 keys, or tap the letters; hold a vowel for its accents.

1
Copy

Capitals & guillemets

Add capital É, À or Ç, œ, and « » from Special, with a no-break space inside the guillemets and before ! or ?.

2
Paste

Copy & paste

Press Copy and paste the text into WhatsApp, an SMS or an email with every accent in place.

3

French Keyboard for Any App

French with its accents intact: É, œ and « » stay as typed in any app.

Snapchat

Snapchat

Snapchat: caption a snap with Bon week-end or Ça va ? and keep the cedilla on ça.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp

WhatsApp: send Joyeux anniversaire or Tu me manques to family in Montréal, Dakar or Lyon with every accent in place.

Instagram

Instagram

Instagram: write a bio with an accented capital, like École or État, which has no key of its own on the old AZERTY.

TikTok

TikTok

TikTok: caption with French spacing, Vraiment ? or C’est fou !, and the right apostrophe in c’est.

Free French Keyboard Online.
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100% free · 396 million speakers · All devices

French is written with the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, but correct French needs 42 characters. Five marks, the acute, grave, circumflex, diaeresis and cedilla, give 13 accented vowels (à â é è ê ë î ï ô ù û ü ÿ) plus ç, and two ligatures, œ and æ, complete the set. None of these 16 counts as a separate letter: in a dictionary é is sorted as e and œ as oe. They still matter. ù exists almost only to tell où (where) from ou (or). ÿ is rarer still, kept in a few names such as the town of L’Haÿ-les-Roses and the writer Pierre Louÿs. The spelling was last adjusted by the 1990 rectifications, published in the Journal officiel on 6 December 1990 with the backing of the Académie française. They let the circumflex drop from i and u (connaitre, cout, ile), except where it separates two words or marks a verb ending, so dû, mûr, sûr and jeûne keep it. They also allow nénufar for nénuphar, ognon for oignon and évènement for événement. The Académie calls them recommendations: neither the old nor the new spelling counts as a mistake.

The letter œ is not o plus e. In cœur (heart), sœur (sister), œuf (egg) and œuvre (work) the two letters form one vowel, and the ligature is required. In coefficient and moelle the o and e are kept apart, and œ there is an error. French also expects accents on capital letters: the Académie française says the accent has full spelling value and recommends É, À and Ç in capitals, because leaving them out slows reading and can cause confusion. And in France, careful typography puts a narrow no-break space (U+202F) before ; ! and ?, a regular no-break space before the colon, and spaces inside « ».

The traditional French keyboard leaves out part of written French. The AZERTY layout, which appeared in France in the last decade of the 19th century, puts é, è, ç and à unshifted on the 2, 7, 9 and 0 keys, gives ù its own key next to M, and makes the digits need Shift. The circumflex and diaeresis are dead keys next to P. But Œ, Æ, the « » quotation marks and the curly apostrophe ’ have no key at all, and the capitals É, È, À and Ç have no key of their own: on the keyboard itself they need Caps Lock. To fix this, the culture ministry’s language delegation (DGLFLF) started a project in late 2015, and AFNOR published the standard NF Z71-300 in April 2019, after more than 3,000 comments in a 2017 public inquiry. Its new AZERTY keeps the 26 letters and 10 digits where they were and moves the rest: à é è ê ( ) ‘ ’ « » fill the number row, AltGr gives æ, œ, ç and ù, AltGr with Shift gives À, É, È and Ç, and AltGr with Space types a no-break space. Windows ships it as French (Standard, AZERTY). The standard is voluntary, and œ is still missing from almost all AZERTY keyboards sold in the 2020s. Belgium has its own AZERTY, where an acute dead key (AltGr with ù) makes É possible. Québec types on QWERTY: the Canadian Multilingual Standard, based on CSA Z243.200-92 (1992), gives é, è, à, ç and ù their own keys, with « and » on AltGr with Z and X.

The Keyboard That Could Not Write French

For over a century the AZERTY layout sold in France had no key for Œ or « », and its accented capitals needed Caps Lock. A 2019 standard, NF Z71-300, finally gave French its missing characters.

26 letters + 16 marked5 accent marksNF Z71-300 · April 2019œ = one vowel
Missing from the old AZERTY

Œ « » — no key at all

Œ«»

The old layout has é, è, ç and à on the 2, 7, 9 and 0 keys, but Shift on those keys gives digits, so the capitals É, È, À and Ç need Caps Lock. œ, æ and the French quotation marks are missing too.

École, not Ecole — the Académie wants the accent on capitals
A ligature, not two letters

cœur, but coefficient

œcœursœur

In cœur, sœur, œuf and œuvre o and e make one vowel, so the ligature is required. In coefficient and moelle they stay apart.

sœur — sister · œuvre — work of art
Space before the mark

Vraiment ? Oui !

;:!?

In France a narrow no-break space goes before ; ! and ?, and a no-break space before the colon. Québec’s language office drops the space before ; ! and ?.

« Tu viens ? » — spaces inside the guillemets too
The 2019 fix

NF Z71-300

àéèê’«»

The new AZERTY keeps the 26 letters and 10 digits in place and puts à é è ê ( ) ‘ ’ « » on the number row. AltGr+O gives œ, AltGr+C gives ç, AltGr+Shift+é gives É.

On Windows: French (Standard, AZERTY)
FAQ

Frequently Asked
Questions

26, the same as English. French adds 13 accented vowels (à â é è ê ë î ï ô ù û ü ÿ), ç and the ligatures œ and æ, which makes 42 characters, but these 16 are not counted as separate letters and are sorted with their base letter.
On the old layout Shift on the é key gives the digit 2; with Caps Lock on, the same key types É. On the 2019 layout (French Standard AZERTY on Windows), press AltGr+Shift with the é key. On this page, hold e or use the capital keys.
Yes. The Académie française says the accent has full spelling value and recommends accented capitals, including the preposition À, because missing accents slow reading and can cause confusion. So write État, École and Ça va.
When o and e form one vowel, as in cœur, sœur, œuf, œil, bœuf and œuvre. In words where the two letters are read separately, such as coefficient and moelle, keep o and e apart.
The 1987 character set ISO 8859-1, used for most Western European text, left out œ, Œ and Ÿ. They came back only in ISO 8859-15 in 1999. Most AZERTY keyboards sold in the 2020s still have no œ key.
On the classic AZERTY they sit unshifted on the 2 (é), 7 (è), 9 (ç) and 0 (à) keys, and ù has its own key next to M. To type the digits on those keys you press Shift.
A French standard published by AFNOR in April 2019. Its AZERTY version keeps the letters and digits in place but adds É, À, Ç, œ, æ, « », ’ and the no-break space, and nearly 60 extra characters for other languages. It is voluntary, not compulsory.
Press AltGr+O for œ and AltGr+Shift+O for Œ. The same pattern gives æ with A, ç with C and ù with U. On the old AZERTY there is no shortcut for œ.
French typography in France puts a narrow no-break space before ; ! and ?, and a full no-break space before the colon, so the mark never starts a new line. Québec’s language office recommends no space before ; ! and ?, though it accepts the narrow one.
French quotes with guillemets « » and puts a no-break space inside each one. The 2019 AZERTY has them unshifted on the 9 and 0 keys; on the Canadian Multilingual layout they are AltGr+Z and AltGr+X. Here they are in Special.
Almost only où (where). The grave accent is there to separate it from ou (or). A few borrowed words also use ù.
Both. The 1990 rectifications let the circumflex drop on i and u, so connaitre, cout and ile are accepted. It stays where it separates two words or marks a verb ending, as in dû, mûr, sûr and jeûne. Neither spelling is a mistake.
Both are correct. The 1990 rectifications, published in the Journal officiel on 6 December 1990, recommend nénufar and ognon, but nénuphar and oignon remain accepted.
Very rarely, and only in proper names such as L’Haÿ-les-Roses, Aÿ and the writer Pierre Louÿs. It is one reason Œ and Ÿ were added to the ISO 8859-15 character set in 1999.
The letters are in the same places, but symbols differ. On the Belgian layout AltGr with é gives @, and AltGr with ù is an acute dead key, so É can be typed. The French Windows AZERTY has no such key.
QWERTY, not AZERTY. The Canadian Multilingual Standard, based on CSA Z243.200-92 from 1992, has its own keys for é, è, à, ç and ù, and Shift gives É, È, À, Ç and Ù directly.
The French standard of 2019 adds the curly ’, as in l’école and aujourd’hui, unshifted on the 8 key of its AZERTY. The old AZERTY only types the straight ' on the 4 key.
Both. événement is the traditional spelling and the 1990 rectifications recommend évènement. Like the other rectified spellings, neither form is counted as a mistake.

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