Pinyin - 拼音 (pīn yīn) is not just a tool for mastering Mandarin Chinese pronunciation: many students also find writing out pinyin is a great way to memorize the correct tones for new vocabulary.
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(*TIP: If you've never heard of pinyin, first check out this post - 'Pinyin: A Beginner's Guide'.)
So how exactly do you type pinyin with the correct tones? Some people simply stick the tone number at the end of the pinyin, for example ni3 hao3. It does the trick, but it doesn't quite look as nice as those pretty tones: nǐ hǎo.
Other people just copy and from Google Translate. But that's a slow process and does nothing to help you learn the correct tones!
It's Yoyo Chinese to the rescue! This post gives you step-by-step instructions for typing pinyin with beautiful tone marks on your Windows or Mac operating system.
This post is NOT about typing Chinese characters! To learn how to type Chinese characters, check out this free lesson from our Chinese Character Course:
And for step-by-step instructions to set up a Chinese input keyboard on your device, click here.
Without further ado, read on to learn how to type pinyin with tone marks on your computer!
• Windows
• Mac OS
Windows
Important Update: Windows Settings Have Changed - click HERE for the 2020 Updates for Installation of the PinyinTones Software on Windows
There are some third party apps and plug ins you can download to type pinyin with tones. But if you're looking to avoid installing extra stuff on your computer, and want to use the tools built into Windows, we'll show you how here!
And the REALLY nice thing about using the built in language tools in Windows is that you don't have to remember which letter the tone mark is over - it does it for you!
To type pinyin in Windows, you need to first add the Japanese language, and then the PinyinTones keyboard.
You might be thinking, 'The 'Japanese language'? I'm here to type Chinese!' Just trust us on this one!
Please Note: If you are unable to set up the “PinyinTones” directly through your Windows settings for any reason, you can also just visit their websiteand download it there!
Add the Japanese Language and the PinyinTones keyboard on Windows
1: Go to 'Settings' by selecting it from the main menu:
2. Click 'Time & Language':
3. Click on “Region & language” from the menu on the left:
4. Click “Add a language”:
5. Search for 'Japanese'. First click on “Japanese”, then click “next” below:
6. Uncheck the box that says, “Set as my Windows display language”. *THIS STEP IS VERY IMPORTANT! You don't want to change your display language to Japanese:
7. Click 'Install'.
8. In the 'Language options' menu for the Japanese Language you just insalled, click “Add a keyboard”:
9. Select “PinyinTones”:
Switching to the PinyinTones keyboard on Windows
1. Click the Language tab on task bar and select “JP Japanese (Japan)”:
2. Click “PinyinTones”:
Typing Pinyin with Tone Marks on Windows
Now that you've got the PinyinTones keyboard selected, you can then type the letters of the pinyin, followed by the number for the tone.
For example, to type the pinyin for 好, you simply type the pinyin ‘hao’, then the number “3” (for the tone), and then click “space”: hǎo
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It's great practice, because you have to remember the correct tone, but it's a lot easier than having to also remember where the tone mark goes. The PinyinTones keyboard takes care of it for you!
Mac OS (Apple computers and laptops)
We're going to be the first to admit it, typing pinyin with tone marks on Mac OS is a little trickier than on Windows.
Probably the biggest difference is that you need to remember which vowel has the tone mark. While that might seem like a big drawback at first, if you are typing pinyin to help you memorize tones, it is MUCH more effective practice if you are forced to remember where the tone mark actually goes!
To type pinyin with tone marks on your Mac device, you'll need to do three things:
• Add the 'ABC - Extended' keyboard to your input methods
• Switch your input method to this keyboard
• Type the vowels with the correct tone marks
The 'ABC - Extended' keyboard is the input method you'll need to select when you want to type pinyin with tone marks. On older Mac operating systems, this may also be called the 'U.S. Extended' keyboard.
Here are step-by-step instructions for adding the ABC - Extended keyboard on Mac OS:
1: Open System Preferences from your dock or the Apple menu.
2: Select 'Language & Region':
3: Click 'Keyboard Preferences':
4: Click the + sign to add a new input keyboard:
5: Scroll down the list on the right to find and select 'ABC - Extended' and click 'Add':
*NOTE: The box that says 'Show input menu in menu bar' should be checked. This will let you see and switch your input method from the menu bar on your Mac.
Google Pinyin Input Method For Mac
There are two ways to switch to the the 'ABC - Extended' input method: from the menu bar or with a keyboard shortcut.
To switch from the menu bar, click the icon on the menu bar to bring up the input method dropdown. You can click on 'ABC - Extended' here, and switch it back to your native language when you are done:
Or, to use keyboard shortcuts to switch between your input methods, open your System Preferences again and click 'Keyboard':
Then click 'Shortcuts' from the buttons at the top of the window, and then 'Input Sources' from the list on the left:
If they are not already selected, you can now click the boxes to enable the shortcuts for switching forward or backwards through your list of input methods.
The default shortcuts are ^ (control) + space bar to go forward, and ^ (control) + ⌥ (option) + space bar to go backward through the list.
Typing Pinyin with Tone Marks on Mac OS
You've added the ABC - Extended keyboard, and selected it as your input method. Now you're ready to type tones marks over your vowels.
The way the system works, you first give the computer the command for the tone, and then type the vowel that the tone will be over. Here are the commands for each tone:
• 1st tone: ⌥ (option) + a
• 2nd tone: ⌥ (option) + e
• 3rd tone: ⌥ (option) + v
• 4th tone: ⌥ (option) + ~ (the key under the Esc key)
So to type a first tone tone mark, click '⌥ (option) + a'. *
NOTE: You click 'a' even if you are putting the tone mark over a different vowel!
The first tone should appear when you are typing the text. Type the correct vowel and it should appear below the tone mark.
Don't forget! When you are typing characters like 女 (nǚ) - woman, or 绿 (lǜ) - green, with the letter/tone 'ǚ', you don't type 'nu' but 'nv'!
Now that you know how to type pinyin with tone marks on your Windows or Mac OS device, try adding it to your practice routine!
Type out vocabulary from our Conversational Courses, or characters you are learning in our Chinese Character Courses, and see if you remember the correct tones!
If you have any questions, other tools and tips you use for typing pinyin, or if you need any help, let us know in the comments below!
Automatically convert Pinyin with tone numbers
to Pinyin with tone marks (diacritics)
Downloads
| Microsoft Office Windows or Mac* | LibreOffice or OpenOffice Windows, Mac, or Linux |
| Word — whole documents (Supports tables.) | Writer — whole documents |
| Word — selected text (Selected text or text before cursor.) | Writer — selected text (Selected text only.) |
| Excel — selected cells | Calc — selected cells |
| PowerPoint | Impress - not yet available (Want to help?) |
*Not Compatible with Office for Mac 2008 or Apple iWork. See FAQ for more info.
Pinyin Macro Instructions
OverviewUse The Right FontInstallationRuby Text
Pinyin Macro Help
FAQs & Technical NotesContact Information
Overview
These macros are very simple to use, as easy as '1-2-3':
- Type Pinyin with numbers representing the tones, as in 'Han4yu3 Pin1yin1'.
- Select the text or document you want to convert.
- Run the macro. Done.
To run macros, in Word or Excel for Windows press <alt-F8> or add the macro to your Quick Access Toolbar. In Office for Mac, go to Tools > Macros. In Libre/OpenOffice, go to Tools > Macros > Run Macro..
Use The Right Font
To use this macro, the only other thing to remember is that you'll need to select a font that includes letters with these diacritics. Otherwise you may find that in each word the one letter with a tone will be in a different font.
In Ubuntu Linux, I've found the default Liberation Serif and the other 'Liberation' fonts do not have everything we need, but Free Sans, DejaVu Sans, DejaVu Serif, 'Ubuntu' and many others look great. Starting with 16.04 / Xerus, Ubuntu includes the Google Chinese font Noto Sans CJK (also available for other systems as a free download under that name or as Adobe Source Han Sans), and that font also includes all the letters with diacritics we require for Hanyu Pinyin tones.
Macs have had Unicode fonts for years. Not every font on a Mac will have these letters, but worrying about Unicode fonts is mostly a Windows thing these days, and Microsoft is getting better and better about that too.
In Windows, use one of these:
| Latin fonts | ||
Arial | In recent versions of Office, these 'core' fonts have been updated to include at least enough of the Unicode character set to display Pinyin with tone marks. (See my note below about the default Calibri and Cambria fonts in Office 2007. Office 2010 and later are OK). | |
| Arial Unicode MS | The default Unicode font, included since MS Office 2000. Safest for use in Access databases too. | |
| Lucida Sans Unicode | The default Unicode font in earlier versions of Windows. Also used in Mac systems. | |
| Chinese fonts | ||
| Microsoft YaHei | Included with Windows 8 and later. | |
| Adobe Source Han Sans (Google Noto Sans CJK) | Free open-source Pan-CJK font. | |
*Windows Office 2010 and later versions include all of these fonts, but Calibri and Cambria did not include all the necessary characters in Office 2007 until I installed Office Multi-Language Pack 2007.
Office XP (2002) and 2003 include the latest Arial, Courier New and Times New Roman, and those editions also normally install the Arial Unicode MS font as the 'Universal Font', also known as the 'Unicode Font' as part of International Support.
Google Pinyin For Mac
In Office 2000 that font is an option. If you did not install it, for either XP 2002/2003 or 2000, follow the instructions for 'Installing the Unicode Font' on Microsoft's 'Administering Fonts for Office XP' page.
Installation
Click one of the download links at the top of this page, and copy/extract the file to your PC.
To install in Microsoft Office, open Word or Excel and in Windows press <alt-F8>, or on a Mac go to Tools > Macros. Type a name for the macro and hit the 'Create' button. Then open the downloaded file, select all the text and copy it into a blank macro. Note my instructions in each macro on exactly where and how to paste it, especially the part about the 'sub' and 'end sub' lines. 99 times out of 100, the reason a macro doesn't work will be a mistake pasting it in during this step.
The MS Office Help files on this topic are actually are pretty good. Open Help, enter 'macro' in the Help index, and drill down to info on creating a macro 'from scratch'. (Note that Excel can be especially difficult about security: you must enable macros, and in recent versions of Excel you must save your final spreadsheet as a macro-enabled file.)
To install in OpenOffice or LibreOffice, go to Tools > Macros > Organize Macros > LibreOffice (or OpenOffice) Basic to create a macro and paste in my code. Here's a link to someone offering more detailed help: 5 Steps to Creating an OpenOffice Macro. In his step 5, instead of writing a macro you would paste in one of mine, making sure to follow my instructions in the macro comments about deleting the 'sub Main' and 'end sub' lines automatically created for any new blank macro.
When running these macros in OOo or LibrO, if you get a message saying you need a 'Java runtime environment' (JRE), that has nothing to do with me and you can run macros without it, but I know how to make that annoyance go away in Linux: install OpenJDK Java Runtime. This is easy in Ubuntu. Open Software Center, search for LibreOffice, click the 'More Info' button, scroll down to find OpenJDK Java Runtime, select it and click the 'Apply changes' button above.
The Help files on this topic included with Open/LibreOffice are not very detailed, but there is some information there. Look under 'Macros' (plural) and click through 'Organize Macros' to 'LibreOffice Basic'.
See also the Troubleshooting section of the Pinyin macro FAQ page. If you get ambitious, the Help files in the Basic editors (launched when you click the 'Edit' button in the macro dialog) can help you add tweaks of your own. For example, you can tell the MS Word macro to search forward from your cursor instead of backwards by setting '.Forward=' to 'True', or you can remove that feature entirely.
Ruby Text
Although you can use this macro to create 'ruby' text (small phonetic transcriptions aligned above or alongside Chinese characters), there is an easier way: there are inexpensive Chinese character fonts available that include Pinyin ruby text, and there are the Phonetic Guide features of Word and Writer. With any of these options you'll have to input the Chinese characters first of course. See this section of my Zhuyin setup page for more information on Zhuyin and Pinyin ruby fonts, and Microsoft Word's Phonetic Guide, and this a brief discussion of Phonetic Guide in LibreOffice/OpenOffice (in my Ubuntu Linux section, but there is also a version of OpenOffice for Windows), which someone is trying to automate by developing an an extension called OOPinyinGuide.
Need More Help?
Please see the Troubleshooting section on the macro FAQ page, and feel free to send send questions, comments or suggestions anytime via the contact page.