How is QWERTZ different from QWERTY?

The German QWERTZ layout swaps the Y and Z keys because Z is far more frequent in German than Y. It also moves several punctuation marks and adds the umlaut keys ä, ö, ü and the ß key to the right of the main letter block.

ß sits to the right of the 0 key on the number row, between 0 and the backspace area. The capital ẞ is produced with Shift on modern layouts, though historically ß had no uppercase form and was written SS.

How do I type @ on a German keyboard?

The at sign is on the AltGr layer of the Q key, so you press AltGr+Q. The euro sign € is AltGr+E. These AltGr combinations are central to the German layout and differ from the US keyboard entirely.

What are the umlaut keys ä, ö, ü positions?

ö and ä sit to the right of the L key where ; and ' are on a US keyboard, and ü sits to the right of P where [ is on US. They are real dedicated keys, not dead keys, so a single press inserts the umlaut.

German Keyboard Layout Reference

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The German QWERTZ keyboard differs from the English QWERTY layout in several ways: Y and Z are swapped, the umlaut letters ä, ö, ü have dedicated keys, and ß sits on the number row. This reference maps every special character to its physical key and modifier.

How it works

Each printable character on the German T2 layout is produced by a key plus an optional modifier:

plain   – the unshifted key (lower-case letters, digits)
Shift   – upper-case letters and the upper symbol on dual keys
AltGr   – the third level: @ € µ { } [ ] \ | ~ and more

For example @ is AltGr+Q, € is AltGr+E, the curly braces { } are AltGr+7 and AltGr+0, and the backslash \ is AltGr+ß. The umlaut keys ä/ö/ü are direct single-press keys, not dead keys.

Example and notes

Typing the email separator on a German keyboard trips up many users because @ is not on the 2 key as in the US layout; it is AltGr+Q. Likewise the square brackets used in code are AltGr+8 and AltGr+9. Knowing the AltGr layer is the key to typing programming symbols comfortably on QWERTZ.