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Quick Accent utility

An animated GIF of Quick Accent utility overlay showing accented character options in PowerToys.

Quick Accent utility provides an alternative way to type accented characters in Windows PowerToys. This tool helps users whose keyboards don't support specific accents with quick key combinations, making it easier to type international characters. The utility is based on Damien Leroy's PowerAccent.

In order to use the Quick Accent utility, open PowerToys Settings, select the Quick Accent page, and turn on the Enable toggle.

How to activate

Quick Accent supports four Activation key options. Left/Right Arrow, Space, and Left, Right or Space use a trigger key. Press and hold the letter opens the picker automatically after you hold the base letter long enough.

Trigger-key activation

In trigger-key mode, press and hold the base letter, then press the activation key. After the Input delay (ms) time passes, the picker opens. Keep using the activation key, or use the arrow keys and Space, to move the selection. Release the keys to insert the selected character.

For example, to type à, press and hold A, then press Space. By default, Input delay (ms) is 300, and the minimum value is 100.

Press-and-hold activation

In Press and hold the letter mode, Quick Accent types the base letter immediately. If you keep holding the letter, the picker opens automatically after the Hold duration (ms) time passes. Use the arrow keys or Space to choose a character, then release the letter to replace the original letter with the selected character. If you don't select a character, the original letter remains.

A quick tap that is shorter than the hold duration types only the original letter. Quick Accent doesn't intercept Ctrl, Alt, AltGr, or Windows-key shortcuts. By default, Hold duration (ms) is 500, and the range is 100 to 3000.

Character sets

Use Characters in PowerToys Settings to limit the available characters. Character sets are organized into two groups, matching what you see in Settings. Recent additions include Belarusian Latin, Belarusian Cyrillic, and Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara. The supported sets also include newer punctuation and currency entries, such as inverted question and exclamation marks in the relevant Spanish and Catalan menus, and the Philippine peso symbol in Currency.

Language sets:

  • Belarusian Latin
  • Belarusian Cyrillic
  • Bulgarian
  • Catalan
  • Crimean Tatar
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • Esperanto
  • Estonian
  • Finnish
  • French
  • Gaeilge
  • Gàidhlig
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Italian
  • Kurdish
  • Lithuanian
  • Macedonian
  • Maltese
  • Maori
  • Norwegian
  • Pinyin
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara
  • Romanian
  • Serbian
  • Serbian Cyrillic
  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Turkish
  • Vietnamese
  • Welsh

Special sets:

  • Special Characters
  • Currency
  • Greek Polytonic
  • IPA
  • Middle Eastern Romanization
  • Proto Indo European

For the canonical, always up-to-date list, see CharacterMappings.cs in the PowerToys source.

Settings

From the Settings menu, the following options can be configured:

Setting Description
Activation key Choose Left/Right Arrow, Space, Left, Right or Space (default), or Press and hold the letter.
Do not activate when Game Mode is on Prevents Quick Accent from activating when Game Mode is on, avoiding interference while gaming.
Characters Show only characters that are in the selected language and special sets.
Toolbar position Choose Top center (default), Bottom center, Left, Right, Top right corner, Top left corner, Bottom right corner, Bottom left corner, or Center.
Show the Unicode code and name of the currently selected character Shows the Unicode code (in hexadecimal) and name of the currently selected character under the selector.
Sort characters by usage frequency Tracks the characters you use and moves the most-used characters earlier in the list.
Start selection from the left Starts the selection from the leftmost character for all activation keys, including Left/Right Arrow.
Input delay (ms) In trigger-key modes, controls how long you hold the key after pressing the activation key before the picker opens. The default is 300, and the minimum value is 100.
Hold duration (ms) In Press and hold the letter mode, controls how long you hold the base letter before the picker opens automatically. The default is 500, and the range is 100 to 3000.
Excluded apps Add an application's name, or part of the name, one per line (e.g. adding Notepad will match both Notepad.exe and Notepad++.exe; to match only Notepad.exe add the .exe extension).

Install PowerToys

This utility is part of the Microsoft PowerToys utilities for power users. It provides a set of useful utilities to tune and streamline your Windows experience for greater productivity. To install PowerToys, see Installing PowerToys.

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