Input
ToolsInput Method (IME)
Input Method Editors (IMEs) convert keystrokes to characters in another language. We offer a number of IMEs. Try them out.
To use an IME, the first step is to enable Input Tools. Follow instructions to enable Input Tools in Search, Gmail, Google Drive, Youtube, Translate, Chrome and Chrome OS.
IME is represented by a character from the language, such as 
.Click the icon to toggle
on/off the current IME or click the arrow next to it to select another input tool.
When IME is toggled on, the button becomes a darker grey 
.
Latin IMEs
Latin IMEs aim to help people type in Latin-script languages (e.g. French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Dutch) using the US keyboard. Features include automatic diacritics, spell correction and prefix completion.
To use Latin IMEs, type unaccented letters and the correct word with diacritics will be suggested. For example, in French, as you type ‘franca’, you will see a prefix-completion candidate.
Press TAB to commit the candidate “français”. At this time, press SPACE/ENTER to commit the source text “franca”.
While continuously typing “francais”, the candidate on stage becomes an auto-diacritic candidate. Press SPACE/ENTER to commit the candidate “français”.
To fetch more candidates, press BACKSPACE and you will see all the candidates.
The first candidate is the high-confident auto-diacritic candidate, which will be automatically highlighted. The second candidate is the source text. The third and fourth candidates are prefix-completion candidates. The 5th and 6th candidates are spelling-correction candidates.
To select a word from multiple candidates, take any of the following actions:
- Press SPACE/ENTER to select the highlighted candidate,
- Click it,
- Type the number next to the word,
- Navigate the list of candidates in a page with UP/DOWN keys. Flip pages with UP/DOWN keys.