keyboard
How Do I Type with IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)? I need to type in Phonetics, but I cannot find a keyboard. I tried the IPA Unicode 6.2 keyboard, but it did not work. It installed, but when I selected it, I could only type the normal english-latin characters. I cannot use copy/paste sites like This, as I need to type a lot.
I am using a MacBook Pro, With Sierra
There are some important gotchas with the other solutions posted here.
For one, symbol and text substitution entries only work in Cocoa apps. If you want a truly system-wide solution that works in all applications, this is not an option.
Also, apps like KeyRemap4MacBook are great, but relying on them means you have to keep the app running in the background all the time, which may not be what you want.
Luckily, remapping keys can be done in a way that will work for any type of application, and without any additional software!
Mac OS X has supported .keylayout files since version 10.2 (Jaguar). You can create your own keyboard layout, or rather, tweak the default one you’re using right now. Simply remap a keyboard combination you never use (for me, there are plenty of those) to the ² and ³ symbols, and that’s it.
In my custom QWERTY keyboard layout, I can simply press ⌥ + ⇧ + 2 to enter ², and ⌥ + ⇧ + 3 to enter ³. (My custom AZERTY layout has these mappings, too.)
To create new keyboard layouts or modify existing ones, I’d recommend Ukelele.app. It has an option to create a new keyboard layout based on the one that’s currently in use.
After you’ve created your custom layout, there’s no need for the application anymore — you certainly don’t need to keep it running in the background.
.keylayout file to the Keyboard Layouts folder within ~/Library (if you want to install it only for the current user) or /Library (if you want to install the layout system-wide).Optionally, you could make the custom keyboard layout the system default by running the Setup Assistant with root privileges. This way, it will be used for the login screen, and any new user accounts you create will default to this layout as well. Note that this can only be done for keyboard layouts in /Library/Keyboard Layouts (i.e., layouts that have been installed system-wide).
sudo rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone; sudo "/System/Library/CoreServices/Setup Assistant.app/Contents/MacOS/Setup Assistant"
You will have to create a new user account in order to complete the Setup Assistant — but don’t worry, you can delete the new account afterwards.
OS X will use the following default icon for your custom keyboard layout:
This icon will show up in the preference pane, and in the “Input menu” in the menu bar.
To replace this with your own icon, create a 16×16px image, and save it in .icns format in the same directory as the keyboard layout itself, using the same file name (only the extension differs). For example, my custom QWERTY layout is named qwerty.keylayout, so if I wanted to use a custom icon, it’d have to be named qwerty.icns.
I can see that this is likely to be very restrictive until you find a solution, so I offer this workaround to ease things while other answers come in. If you enter your password into your username field, then select it, copy it, and type over the top with your actual user name, you can then paste the password into the password field.. This is 3 extra taps overall, but will at least allow you to use your logins in the meantime.
Best Answer
If the standard IPA layout doesn't work for you, I would suggest making a custom keyboard layout with Ukelele (or if you prefer text-based editing, KeyLayoutMaker).
Alternatively, if you don't need quite the level of speed that can offer, you can simply use the Character Palette (Edit > Emoji and Symbols) to type the characters by double-clicking them. To get the "Phonetic Alphabet" pane to show up, customize which are visible with the gear icon in the top left.