Swedish typing practice
Practise Swedish typing in your browser at no cost: Smart Lessons in the words Swedes use most, Swedish books to type, and å, ä and ö on whatever keyboard you have.
What you can practise
Smart Lessons in Swedish
Real Swedish words, built around your slowest key. You start on six keys, and é, å, ä and ö join as the others come up to speed.
The Swedish alphabet
Every letter in order against the clock, with how to type each Swedish letter on your keyboard.
Typing games in Swedish
Pilot and Spaceship: steer through the gaps or shoot down enemy ships by typing Swedish words.
6 Swedish books
Classic Swedish books, out of copyright, typed a passage at a time.
Swedish letters
Swedish adds å, ä and ö after z, and they are letters of their own, not a and o with marks: dictionaries list them at the very end. Many of the commonest words need them: "på" (on), "är" (is), "för" (for), "även" (even), "också" (also). É appears in loanwords such as "idé" and "armé". Smart Lessons bring each one in once the letters before it are up to speed.
A Swedish keyboard is QWERTY with Ö and Ä to the right of L, Å to the right of P, and an acute dead key ´ beside + for é. On a US or UK keyboard, US-International makes Shift+' a dead diaeresis: press it, then A or O. Å is AltGr+W on Windows; on a Mac with ABC – Extended, ä and ö are Option+U then the vowel.
On a Swedish keyboard
Windows: Swedish · macOS: Swedish · Linux: Swedish
Add it in Windows under Settings > Time & language > Language & region, in macOS under System Settings > Keyboard > Input Sources, in Linux under Settings > Keyboard > Input Sources.
| Letter | Windows | macOS | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|
| é | ´then E | ´then E | ´then E |
| å | Å | Å | Å |
| ä | Ä | Ä | Ä |
| ö | Ö | Ö | Ö |
On a US or UK keyboard
Windows: United States-International · macOS: ABC – Extended · Linux: English (US, intl., with dead keys)
Add it the same way. On US-International ' and " become dead keys: type a space after one for the mark itself.
| Letter | Windows | macOS | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|
| é | 'then E | Option Ethen E | 'then E |
| å | AltGr W | Option Kthen A | Shift AltGr 0then A |
| ä | Shift 'then A | Option Uthen A | Shift 'then A |
| ö | Shift 'then O | Option Uthen O | Shift 'then O |
Tips for typing Swedish
Three keys for the right little finger
Ö sits right of L on the home row, Ä right of Ö, and Å one row up, right of P. All three are the right little finger's: reach out and come straight back. "Här", "för" and "både" are good words to drill.
An a is not an å
"Får" (gets, sheep) and "far" (father) are different words, as are "för" and "for" (went). The lessons count the letter, so a plain a or o where å, ä or ö belongs is a mistake.
The dead key waits for the vowel
With US-International, Shift+' shows nothing until you type the vowel. Ä and ö come often enough that the two presses soon become one movement; for a quotation mark on its own, press space after it.