23rd of May 2022
When I started learning Finnish I immediately noticed that this language uses letters ä, ö and ü, which are not easily found on a standard QWERTY keyboard. In theory, you can press (please bear in mind I use a MacBook) Option + U to get ¨ and then a vowel. This solution, however, gets cumbersome really quickly - four keystrokes just to get one letter.
My first instinct was to select a Finnish keyboard layout in macOS settings. It worked but the aforementioned letters were located in unusual (at least for me) places - to the right of the letter L. This also meant I'd be losing convenient access to the semicolon and question mark which were put somewhere else. The question mark's location changed as well.
Since changing my typing habits was not my goal, I decided to create my own layout using a handy app
called Ukelele. I duplicated the standard QWERTY layout and put
the additional vowels under the Option key.
So for example, to get ä, I have to press Option + A, which is
half the keystrokes than with the Finnish layout and it doesn't mess with the other characters,
especially the ones used a lot when programming.
You can download my layout by clicking here: Finnish Pro