My Steam Deck arrived and I even got a setup for it. My problem rn is that my keyboard has an american layout but I need to type german umlaute sometimes…how do I do that?

  • @[email protected]
    26•1 year ago

    If you use the keyboard for desktop mode:

    1. Open system settings
    2. Navigate to “Input Devices”, “Keyboard”
    3. Go to the “Layout” tab
    4. “Configure Layouts”, then “Add”
    5. Add “German (US)”
    6. Switch the layout on the “Taskbar” on the bottom right of the screen.

    You can then use Umlaute like on any German keyboard, plus on the “a,U,o” keys themselves when you press AltGr (right alt). Any Sonderzeichen are like in the American layout. If you want to change that just use the normal German layout instead of German (US).

    There is no way to change the layout of physical keyboards in the gaming mode. Those settings don’t change anything in the gaming mode and but the gaming mode settings only work for the on screen keyboard.

    Bonus Umlaut of the day: Ö

      • @[email protected]
        2•1 year ago

        Yes, as long as you have the [;' keys it will work just like it does with the German layout.

        Even if you didn’t have those keys, you could also use AltGr + a, AltGr + u andl AltGr + o for the Umlaut variants. I like to use those much more, because they seem much more logical to me Ü. That isn’t possible with the default German layout, which is a shame. I like the German (US) layout much more because of that.

    • @[email protected]
      1•1 year ago

      There is no way to change the layout of physical keyboards in the gaming mode. Those settings don’t change anything in the gaming mode and but the gaming mode settings only work for the on screen keyboard.

      You might be able to since gamescope (the compositor that the deck uses in game mode) supports keyboard layouts through XKB environment variables, but I’m not sure where to specify those on the deck (and it might even require write mode),

  • MuchPineapples
    3•1 year ago

    Put your keyboard to “US international with dead keys”, then use quote (") and the letter, you’ll get an umlaut.

  • @aramus
    2•1 year ago

    If you talk about a physical keyboard that is plugged into your steam deck: have a look at eurkey

  • copygirlEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    A friend gifted me a laptop with US layout. One day I figured I really needed those German characters. I did the same as @[email protected], except I ended up picking the US-International layout, and removed the old layout since I didn’t need it anymore.

    • @[email protected]
      3•1 year ago

      That one works as well, but I dislike the way quotes work on that keyboard. I never got used to that.

      • copygirlEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        You’re right, I misremembered! I tried US-International, and because of that exact issue you mentioned switched to EurKEY. In my case it wasn’t part of the layout selection, so I had to change it in a config file.

  • KptnAutismus
    1•1 year ago

    my guess is that you have a custom keyboard with qmk firmware (why else use ANSI layout?). so pick a mofifier key in VIA and make it switch the keyboard to a different layer, then maybe set the A O U and maybe S keys to Ä Ö Ü and ß. if you’re not running QMK, just buy a DE layout keyboard for god’s sake.