Typing Hanja on macOS

ian
Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT
macos, i18n, korean, languages

이제 漢字 쓰는 方法을 알게 되었다!

I was today years old when I finally figured out how to type Hanja (characters from China that were historically used to write Korean). It struck me as very strange that this didn't seem possible in any of the obvious input methods. In Japanese, for example, you get search-as-you-type style suggestions popping up as you type, whether in Kana or Romaji mode. In fact, until now, I mostly relied on my prior study of Japanese, switched to that layout, and typed in a Japanese reading. This was quite clunky though as I am now learning the Korean readings.

I even asked several Koreans if they knew how, and none did (at least for macOS), since it's relatively uncommon to use them these days, particularly for younger people. Windows keyboards have a dedicated Hanja mode key, but I've never seen an Apple keyboard with this, and I'm not even totally sure if macOS understands the key code (if anyone knows, let me know on Mastodon).

It turns out this IS in fact possible; it's just uncharacteristically buried. The trick is to press option+return. Then you'll get a menu where you can select Hanja matches for the previous "word" (it seems to rely on spacing, which is not always completely consistent in colloquial writing, but it's not too hard to get used to.) I found tip on Apple's website via a search.

This is probably only relevant to like 2 other people on the internet, but I thought I'd spread the word since it was relatively hard to find!