Type Chinese using Pinyin - Traditional on Mac
With the Pinyin - Traditional input source, you can enter Traditional Chinese characters using Pinyin phonetic input codes.
Enter Chinese characters using Pinyin - Traditional
On your Mac, first set up the input source (add Pinyin - Traditional and, if desired, Handwriting - Traditional).
Click the Input menu in the menu bar, then do one of the following:
Choose Pinyin - Traditional to use the keyboard.
If your Mac has a Touch Bar and you customized the Control Strip to add the Input Sources button
, tap it to select Pinyin - Traditional.Choose Handwriting - Traditional to use the trackpad.
If your Mac has a Touch Bar and you customized the Control Strip to add the Handwriting button
, tap it to select Handwriting - Traditional. See Use Trackpad Handwriting to write Chinese.
In an app, do any of the following:
Enter Pinyin: Type the input codes for the characters you want to use, then select the characters in the Candidate window. For example, to enter 蘋果公司, type “pingguogongsi”, then select candidates in the window.
Enter Full Pinyin (Quanpin): Type the input codes for the characters you want to use, then select the characters in the Candidate window. For example, to enter 西安, type “xi’an”, then select 西安 in the window.
Use an apostrophe to separate syllables that have ambiguous parsings. Full Pinyin has modifications that make typing more convenient; for example, “v” is used to replace “ü” (so to enter 綠, you would type “lv”).
Enter Abbreviated Pinyin (Jianpin): Type the consonant of each syllable in an input code, then select characters in the Candidate window. For example, to enter 蘋果公司 (the input codes are ping, guo, gong, and si), type “pggs”. Or, to enter 計算機, type “jsj” (the input code is “jisuanji”).
You can use both full and abbreviated Pinyin in the same conversion. For example, if you type “pingguogs” with “gongsi” abbreviated to “gs”, the result is still “蘋果公司”.
Enter Structural Pinyin (Chaizi): Type a Chaizi input code with two or more syllables, then press Shift-Space bar. For example, type “jiji”, then press Shift-Space bar. The Candidate window opens, and the first candidates shown in the Composition pane are 喆, 兓, and 旣.
With structural Pinyin, each syllable of the input sequence is treated as the Pinyin for one of the components in the character (in order from left to right and top to bottom).
Enter English words: Enter an English word, then select the word in the Candidate window. For example, type “ipad”, then select the word in the window. Proper nouns are automatically capitalized.
Show the keyboard layout: Click the Input menu in the menu bar, then choose Show Keyboard Viewer.
If the menu item isn’t shown, choose Apple menu
> System Preferences, click Keyboard, click Keyboard, then select “Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar.”
Enter Chinese characters using Stroke with Pinyin - Traditional
On your Mac, first set up the input source (add Pinyin - Traditional and, if desired, Handwriting - Traditional).
Click the Input menu in the menu bar, then do one of the following:
Choose Pinyin - Traditional to use the keyboard.
If your Mac has a Touch Bar and you customized the Control Strip to add the Input Sources button
, tap it to select Pinyin - Traditional.Choose Handwriting - Traditional to use the trackpad.
If your Mac has a Touch Bar and you customized the Control Strip to add the Handwriting button
, tap it to select Handwriting - Traditional. See Use Trackpad Handwriting to write Chinese.
In an app, use a prefix key (u), followed (without a space) by the stroke input code for a character. For example, you can type the following:
Stroke within Pinyin
Keyboard key
一
H
丨
S
丿
P
丶(乀)
N
乛(乙)
Z
*wildcard
X
If you type “unnzzsh”, you get 字 as the first candidate.
You can also add words to your user dictionary to save time when you need to type the same word again.
You may need to change preferences, for example, to show predictive completions or to change the orientation of the Candidate window.