German Keyboard Layouts

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

Standard German Layout

Germany layout is a QWERTZ Layout .

german layout S4Qk
German layout. (Red colored are Dead Keys.) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Germany.svg]

Efficiency of German Keyboard Layout

The German layout is not very efficient.

[see Alt Graph Key, Compose Key, Dead Key]

Ergonomic German Layouts

German Alphabet

The German alphabet is the same as English, with the addition of the following:

Ä ä, Ö ö, Ü ü, ß

The ß is called Eszett (sz) or scharfes S, sharp s. Often it is equivalent to ss. The capital version of ß is , but it's basically not used.

Those special letters ä ö ü ß, does not occur often. Their frequency ranks near the bottom.

German Character Frequency

german letter frequency 34432
German letter frequency

[see Character Frequency Plot]

German Keyboards

International Layouts


Western Europe Layouts



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