German Umlaute don't work after upgrading to Yosemite with Japanese Romaji Layout set on U.S.

I am in the same situation!! Let's tell Apple to fix this. I'm Japanese too, Macbook Air, Yosemite OS X user.

To ask for a fix, use

http://www.apple.com/feedback

You might want to ask in the Japanese forums in case someone has found an easier workaround

https://discussionsjapan.apple.com/

I did some searching and found they've changed the implementation of “special” characters to be more in line with iOS:

1. Hold down the “basic” letter you wish to umlaut, tilde, accent, etc.; a pop-up appears with the special characters available for that letter.

2. Either click on the desired letter or type the corresponding number that appears under each.

That said, I wish they would allow the old way of doing things, which allowed rapid insertion of such characters in text without 1) waiting for the pop-up and 2) taking my hands from the center of the keyboard to either do a mouse click or select a number (I was never very good with “top row” numbers). In their eagerness to enforce uniformity across OSs, developers seem not to understand the difference between sliding one finger 1/2" on a touch screen (very handy on my iPhone) and what it takes to implement its equivalent on a keyboard. Where do these people come from—Micro$oft?? I do quite a bit of writing in German, but my native language is English and neither my family or I wants to have to invest in a German keyboard. This “feature” alone will prevent me from EVER “upgrading” to Yosemite.

MikenDonna wrote:

I did some searching and found they've changed the implementation of “special” characters to be more in line with iOS:

1. Hold down the “basic” letter you wish to umlaut, tilde, accent, etc.; a pop-up appears with the special characters available for that letter.

2. Either click on the desired letter or type the corresponding number that appears under each.

Yes, they added the Character Picker back in 10.7 three years ago. But the old option-key shortcuts are still there.

The problem is that neither of these is available any longer when you have the Romaji input method showing in the "flag" menu at the top right of the screen, and that is the reason for this discussion. It does still work when the US flag is there, but Japanese users normally prefer to use Romaji.

Or does it in fact work for you with Romaji?

I don't use Romaji (though my boss is Chinese and shares the iMac, so he may have something installed), but just discovered the problem this week when my iMac at work was upgraded “for me.” Now, as jayclub7 said, the "old option-key shortcuts" no longer function (unless you mean OLD like opt-s = ß, opt-m = µ, etc. which don't include any umlauted characters); moreover, the little US flag is gone too (no flag of any kind there), along with the Character Viewer—haven't had time to check out Keyboard Prefs (or for that matter to see if there's any way to get the command–zoom function back 😕)… I'll check back when I know more.

Thanks for your feedback—it would be nice to know that this isn't a Yosemite problem per se.

MikenDonna wrote:

the "old option-key shortcuts" no longer function (unless you mean OLD like opt-s = ß, opt-m = µ, etc. which don't include any umlauted characters

The OLD option key shortcut in the US layout for umlaut is Option plus u, then the vowel. It has been this way for ever. Does yours really not work?

(Jayclub7 is referring to the Romaji keyboard used for Japanese, not the US layout).

To get the flag at the top right of the screen, just go to system prefs/keyboard/input sources and check the box for Show Input Menu in Menu Bar.

To see Character Viewer, just go to system prefs/keyboard/keyboard and check the box for Show Keyboard and Character Viewer in Menu Bar.

MikenDonna wrote:

if there's any way to get the command–zoom function back

See if this helps

http://www.tekrevue.com/new-zoom-button-yosemite/

Thanks for your trouble, but I wasn't talking about zooming windows, but the command-zoom (command–slide mouse up/down) to zoom into a portion of the screen. I suspect/hope it just needs to be turned on in system preferences. Our iMac is in our living room/office and we use that feature a lot to allow others to read emails, etc. over our shoulders. Unlike the former feature, it worked everywhere and had no effect on the appearance of a block of text except to make it larger. As I said, I'm hoping I'll find it in Preferences somewhere…

OS X Yosemite: Zoom pane of Accessibility preferences

No this stopped working on my rather new apple computer just a few days ago. I do not know why.

Any idea how to find out?

now all I get is lots of a's or u's etc. no ability to select for the umlauted letter.

HELP!!

fzberli wrote:

No this stopped working on my rather new apple computer just a few days ago. I do not know why.

Any idea how to find out?

now all I get is lots of a's or u's etc. no ability to select for the umlauted letter.

What keyboard layout are you using (the flag at the top right of the screen)? This discussiion is about the Japanese Romaji keyboard.

I'm having this exact same problem. I can't use some of the classic option combinations, like option-u, or option-r, or option-g

Option-e still works as it used to.

I've never touched my input source and it's US. Following the hints on this thread, I attempted to add US International and US Extended to see if switching to any of those or back from any of those would fix my problem. No dice. I'm stuck without the ability to use these shortcuts, which I desperately need daily.

I'm also on a Macbook Retina (the first version released).

Christopher Kausel wrote:

I'm having this exact same problem. I can't use some of the classic option combinations, like option-u, or option-r, or option-g

Option-e still works as it used to.

Do you see a US flag at the top right of your screen? If not, what?

What happens when you type option r, option u, and option g? Nothing at all?

Before I stumbled upon this thread, there was no flag at all. I had the character viewer there because pre-Yosemite it was the only way to access emoji (and things like arrows and other special symbols) in many apps (and still is for my Adobe CS5 apps). Additionally, I would use the keyboard viewer from time to time as a way to learn which keys to use for other special symbols (bring up the keyboard viewer and press option or shift-option or other combinations and it would show you a preview of what each key would generate).

While reading this thread, I added more input sources (US International and US Extended) and would see the flags. The flags replaced the previous character/keyboard viewer menu icon. I switched between each flag to test my issue under each, to no avail. Then I tried adding the Spanish keyboard but still had the same issue.

Now I've removed all the input sources except the primary US keyboard. There is no longer a flag in my menu, it's gone back to the character viewer icon.

The issue is still there. When I type option-r, u, or g, in any app nothing happens at all.

Unfortunately, neither auto-substitution nor press-and-hold work in Adobe CS5 apps, which is where I need to use these special characters the most.

Thank you for reaching out 🙂

Christopher Kausel wrote:

When I type option-r, u, or g, in any app nothing happens at all.

How about option n, option i, option s, option a, and option c? Use TextEdit to test, with font set to Lucida Grande.

Have you tried creating a new user account and seeing whether you have the same problem when logged into that?