WinCompose is a compose key for Windows. It allows to easily write special characters such as é ž à ō û ø ☺ ¤ ∅ « ♯ ⸘ Ⓚ ㊷ ♪ ♬ using short and often very intuitive key combinations. For instance, ö is obtained using o + “, and  is obtained using < + 3.

WinCompose also supports Emoji input for 😁 👻 👍 💩 🎁 🌹 🐊.

Visit the GitHub page for WinCompose:

Download latest: WinCompose 0.9.4 (December 6, 2019)

Help wanted!

Note: WinCompose is not digitally signed. You can help with this by donating to the project.

As of now, WinCompose is almost fully translated to Belarusian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. It is partially translated to Czech, Indonesian, Irish, Sardinian, Serbian and Slovak. You can help us translate it to more languages using the Weblate project:

Translation status

Please report bugs or suggest improvements to Sam Hocevar or to the GitHub issue tracker.

24 thoughts on “WinCompose

  1. Jean Jacques C

    Un très bon programme.
    Pourriez vous expliquer comment on peut personnaliser la suite de touche correspondant à un caractère ?
    Par exemple, pour obtenir le C majuscule cédille, il faut entrer la suite C,
    Que dois mettre dans le fichier .XCompose.txt pour obtenir ce caractère avec la suite ced ?
    Je pense qu’un exemple simple pourrait décoincer des utilisateurs qui comme moi sont très loin d’être des experts.

      1. Michel D

        Please, delete this comment and its parent one, because the “Less than” and “Greater than” symbols are not displayed.

    1. Michel D

      Dans le fichier %USERPROFILE%\.XCompose :
      (notation parce que les signes Inférieur et Supérieur ne sont pas affichés dans le commentaire : “(” = signe inférieur, “)” = signe supérieur)

      (Multi_key) (C) (e) (d): “Ç”

    2. Kervala

      Mieux vaut tard que jamais :)

      Pour ma part, j’ai mis :

      : “○” U25CB # CIRCLE
      : “●” U25CF # BLACK CIRCLE

  2. Tom

    Fantastic program. Makes me wonder why someone hasn’t thought of this before.
    I’m an English teacher, and this should come in handy for pronunciation symbols.
    Just one wishlist item. It would be great if the symbols for the “ch” sound, and the “j” / “dzh” sound,
    as well as the symbols for voiced and unvoiced “th” sounds could be added to the IPA symbol list.

    1. Grey

      You can ad those symbols yourself in the program and set up suitable sequences for them. For example, if you in the row:

      ` : “ʒ” U0292 # LATIN SMALL LETTER EZH`

      the sequence Compose j h will produce the ʒ symbol.

  3. Temak

    Hey! I really enjoy your app. Thanks a lot for it!
    Also, I have an idea: what about adding new category: «Favorites»? With that category user can add his favourie sequences in one place without searching it everywhere.

  4. wolf

    Ouais ouais ouais, on est bien là.
    Juste pour dire: Super outils, c’est chapeau melon. On aime on aime.
    Ça me permet d’être en qwerty tout en profitant des accents et sans être sur mac ou sans les bugs d’une distribution GNU/Linux en carton.

    Un gros merci.

  5. Robert B Matlock

    I have installed wincompose 8.2. I have left the compose key as right alt. I am running windows 10 64 bit and am using the english international keyboard.

    I can’t get it to enter a single special character using the sequences in the software. For example, according to the GUI, both

    right alt / =
    right alt =/

    should give me a not equal sign. I get ABSOLUTELY NADA!

    1. Anders Carlson

      That most likely is because on an english international keyboard there is not right Alt, but instead AltGr and that counts as a completely separate key. Try to change to either AltGr or another key.

  6. Erik

    The last version that works for me (on Windows 10) is 8.2.
    Both 9.0 and 0.9.1beta20190405 just show a prompt window for a split second and then nothing.

  7. Adam Fazari Ahkamul Hakim

    Very useful and fun program. What about the sequence for “ɲ” though?

  8. Cleauid

    As a lecturer, I find this a fantastic program to use.

    Any chance of making it cross-platform e.g. MacOS and Linux?

  9. Anton Kring

    I use Windows to play some games that I haven’t been able to reliably on Linux. Sometimes in multiplayer games I like to insult my opponents in their own language, which I can easily do on Linux as it supports a compose key out-of-the-box. Thanks to WinCompose I can now insult a larger audience while playing on Windows.

  10. Hans August

    I miss an explanation of where the various shortcut keys are on the keyboard. Not the least the tilted square that all combinations start with. What is that key? Also, I have a Danish keyboard so some keys might not be accessible. Isn’t it possible to just make your own shortcuts? That would be much easier. Thanks for the software anyway :)

    1. Hans August

      Okay found the options with the compose key (I set it to left alt, don’t have a right alt). It doesn’t work though. A simple one like “ﬀ” which is “compose key + f + f” just results in a windows system sound. And eg. the colon “:” on a Danish keyboard is “shift + .” so not sure if I should hold shift when needing that, which I guess will also act as a modifier key for the other characters in the sequence and thus screw it all up.? I hope my problems are understandable.

  11. Cleauid

    Would be fantastic if WinCompose were to become cross platform, so as to be available on MacOS and Linux (e.g. Ubuntu)
    Very much appreciate the program and will definitely be donating to its development!


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