Featured image of post A Better US Keyboard for Mac: Accents, Pinyin Tones, Greek Letters, and Maltese Characters
Open Source macOS

A Better US Keyboard for Mac: Accents, Pinyin Tones, Greek Letters, and Maltese Characters

A custom macOS keyboard layout that keeps standard US ABC typing unchanged while adding mnemonic Option layers for European Latin letters, pinyin tones, Greek, Maltese-friendly characters, and academic symbols.

This post introduces ABC Custom Keyboard, a macOS keyboard layout that keeps normal US typing unchanged while making accents, pinyin tones, Greek letters, Maltese characters, and symbols easier to type.

I have open-sourced ABC Custom Keyboard, a macOS keyboard layout for people who want to keep typing on a standard US ABC keyboard while gaining fast access to European Latin characters, Greek letters, pinyin tone marks, Maltese-friendly extensions, mathematical symbols, numbered markers, and technical symbols.

The project is here: Jingyuan-Zheng/ABC-Custom-Keyboard.

Why I Built It

The standard US keyboard is comfortable for daily English typing, programming, and shortcuts. The problem starts when multilingual writing enters the workflow.

Typing German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Maltese, Greek, pinyin, or academic notation often means switching input sources, opening the character viewer, or memorizing unrelated shortcuts. Language-specific keyboard layouts can solve one problem but create another: the physical keys no longer match US keyboard muscle memory. A German layout, for example, moves Y.

ABC Custom keeps the base layer as standard US ABC, then adds mnemonic Option layers on top of it. The goal is simple: one US keyboard for multilingual writing and research.

Start from the Normal US ABC Layout

ABC Custom assumes a standard US ABC physical layout. The base layer stays familiar, so everyday English typing and most Command / Control shortcuts continue to behave as expected.

Standard US ABC base keyboard layout
Figure 1: The base layer remains the standard US ABC layout.

Direct Option Layers

Hold Option and press a key to type the symbol shown on that key. Blue keys are dead-key prefixes: press the prefix first, release it, then press the target key.

ABC Custom Option keyboard layer
Figure 2: The Option layer adds common symbols and mnemonic dead-key prefixes.

Shift + Option opens a second direct layer, including superscript and circled-character prefixes.

ABC Custom Shift Option keyboard layer
Figure 3: Shift + Option extends the symbol layer without changing the base layout.

The direct layers cover common symbols such as ℕ, ℤ, ℚ, ℝ, π, Σ, √, ∂, ≠, ≤, ≥, arrows, dashes, currency signs, checkmarks, and boxed or starred markers.

Dead Keys That Are Easier to Remember

Dead keys make composition fast without assigning every accented character to a separate shortcut.

For example:

  • Option + 1, then a, outputs ā
  • Option + 2, then e, outputs é
  • Option + 5, then u, outputs ü
  • Option + G, then p, outputs π

The pinyin tone layers follow tone numbering: Option + 1 to 4 correspond to tones 1-4.

ABC Custom pinyin tone 1 dead key layer
Figure 4: Tone 1 uses Option + 1, then a vowel key.

The umlaut layer uses Option + 5 because the % key visually suggests two dots. The dot-above layer uses Option + 8 because the * key suggests a dot or star.

ABC Custom umlaut dead key layer
Figure 5: The umlaut layer covers letters such as ä, ë, ï, ö, and ü.
ABC Custom dot above dead key layer
Figure 6: Dot-above characters are useful for Maltese and scholarly transliteration.

Greek, Subscripts, Superscripts, and Technical Symbols

For academic writing, the layout also includes Greek letters on mnemonic Latin keys. Option + G enters the Greek layer, so p maps to π, m maps to μ, l maps to λ, w maps to ω, and d maps to δ.

ABC Custom Greek dead key layer
Figure 7: The Greek layer places common letters on mnemonic Latin keys.

There are also paired subscript and superscript layers, plus degree, diameter, empty-set, copyright, registered, trademark, circled characters, and round operators.

ABC Custom superscript dead key layer
Figure 8: Superscripts are available from Shift + Option + 9.

Installation

The easiest path is the DMG release:

  1. Download ABC-Custom-Keyboard.dmg from the latest GitHub Release.
  2. Open it and drag ABC Custom.bundle to the Keyboard Layouts folder shown in the DMG window.
  3. Log out and log back in, or restart macOS.
  4. Open System Settings and add ABC Custom from Keyboard Input Sources.

Manual installation is also available by copying bundle/ABC Custom.bundle to:

1

~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/

Then log out and back in, or restart macOS.

Files for People Who Want to Modify It

The editable layout file is layouts/ABC Custom.keylayout. The packaged release bundle is under bundle/ABC Custom.bundle, and the keyboard maps in the README are generated from assets/*.svg with tools/generate_keymap_svg.py.

If you write in multiple European languages, use pinyin tone marks, type Maltese characters, or frequently need Greek and math symbols, ABC Custom gives those characters a predictable home without giving up the standard US keyboard.