Cheap French and English Keyboard “Hack” working in two languages (Canadian Keyboard, European)

On a Mac, to get accents for A, E, C and all the other ones you need, you simply hold down on the key, and a mini menu pops up above the letter and you can select any key you want: e now becomes any e you need in any language:

I spent $100 on a French language keyboard from Europe that didn’t work.

I briefly considered buying a whole new French-only laptop.

And then I realized I could just do a virtual keyboard instead *face palm*

You can just select KEYBOARD and then flip it from ENG to FR easily

In your Windows settings, at the very bottom right, you can switch between ANY language keyboard. I had it set to ENG (English) and I switched to FR (French).

The only thing is the keyboard is now all a little wonky because some of the buttons you had before, are not the same as what you see on an English one, due to having accents, and the layout changes with every style of laptop/keyboard (or so it seems).

So I found some keyboard stickers and I just cut them out with the accents and paste them where the new keyboard should be, so I know that if I hit SHIFT + the key, I will get another accent… or not, and how to use them.

I am pretty pleased with how it worked out. My keyboard now looks like this. The stickers are thick and not at all flimsy or thin, they feel more like pieces of sticky cardboard, and this is how my keyboard now works.

I have the ones that I use the most – é, è, ç and à … and for the other accents like ë and ä, or ê or ô, I click on the accent that holds the ^ or the double dot, and then the letter creates the accent with the alphabet.

I tested every single key by tapping it, and then SHIFT + key …. and if the sticker is on the left of the key, then I know SHIFT + key will get that accent.

The total Canadian French keyboard looks like this now, an English keyboard to a French Canadian one with accents: