Ä / ä (A With an Umlaut): How to Type, Copy, and Use It
ä is a lowercase a with an umlaut, the two dots on top. Its capital is Ä. In German it’s a sound-changed a; in Finnish and Swedish it’s a separate letter of the alphabet; and elsewhere the same two dots can simply mean “pronounce this vowel on its own.”
If you just need the character, copy ä or Ä from the grid below, along with its HTML entity or URL code. If you can’t type it at all, German has a standard workaround, covered further down, that most guides skip.
Below you’ll find how to type ä on every device, how to write it as “ae” when you must, how it sorts in a dictionary, and how it behaves in links and code.
In a hurry?
- Copy it: click ä or Ä in the grid below.
- On Windows: hold Alt and type 0228 for ä (0196 for Ä).
- On a Mac: press Option + u, then press a.
- On a phone: press and hold the a key, then slide to ä.
- Can’t type it? In German, ä can be written as ae (Müller → Mueller).
Click to copy: ä, and its codes
Grab the letter, the HTML entity, or the URL code
Table of Contents
Copy and paste ä
The two characters, with every code you’re likely to need in one row. Use the grid above to copy with a click; this table is the reference.
| Character | Name | Unicode | Windows | Mac | HTML |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ä | a with umlaut | U+00E4 | Alt + 0228 | Option + u, a | ä |
| Ä | A with umlaut | U+00C4 | Alt + 0196 | Option + u, Shift + A | Ä |
How to type ä on any device
ä sits in the old Latin range, so it’s easy to reach almost everywhere.
Windows
Turn on Num Lock, hold Alt, and type 0228 on the numeric keypad for ä, or 0196 for Ä. The top-row numbers won’t work; it has to be the keypad.
For regular use, switch to the US-International layout and type a quote (“) then a, or add the German keyboard, where ä has its own dedicated key. You can also press Windows + . and pick ä from the symbol panel.
Mac
Press Option + u together and let go; nothing shows yet. Press a and ä appears. For the capital, it’s Option + u, then Shift + A. Holding the a key down also brings up a menu with ä on it.
iPhone and Android
Press and hold the a key on the on-screen keyboard, then slide onto ä and lift your finger. Nothing to set up, and it works the same in nearly every app.
Microsoft Word
Press Ctrl + Shift + : (the colon), let go, then press a. Add Shift on the a for Ä. The Windows Alt code works here too.
Linux
Press Ctrl + Shift + U, type 00e4, then press Enter. With a Compose key, it’s Compose, then “, then a.
Excel and Google Sheets
Use the Alt code on the keypad, or the UNICHAR formula: =UNICHAR(228) returns ä and =UNICHAR(196) returns Ä. The same works in Google Sheets.
Writing ä as “ae”: the umlaut substitution
When you can’t produce the character, German has a long-standing fallback: write ä as ae. The same rule turns ö into oe, ü into ue, and ß into ss. So Bäcker becomes Baecker, Müller becomes Mueller, and Köln becomes Koeln.
This isn’t a workaround people invented; it’s the official convention. German passports use it in the machine-readable strip, so Müller is printed MUELLER, and it’s how umlauts were handled on early typewriters and in the first web domains. If a form won’t accept ä, the ae spelling is the correct thing to type.
One caution: it’s specific to German. Writing ae for ä in Finnish or Swedish would be wrong, because there ä is its own letter with its own sound, not a stand-in for a plus e.
Is ä its own letter? Umlaut vs diaeresis
The two dots have two different origins that happen to look identical. In German they mark an umlaut, a vowel that shifted forward in the mouth, which is why Mann (“man”) becomes Männer (“men”). The dots began as a tiny cursive e written above the a, which shrank over the centuries into two points.
Whether ä counts as a separate letter depends on the language. In German it doesn’t; it’s treated as a variant of a. In Finnish and Swedish it very much does, sitting near the end of the alphabet as its own letter, a long way from a. And when the same two dots act as a diaeresis, as in a name like Staël, they only tell you to pronounce the vowel separately. The full set of two-dot letters is covered in the umlaut letters guide.
How ä is sorted alphabetically
Where ä lands in an alphabetical list is a surprisingly common source of bugs. German has two accepted orders. Dictionary order, the standard one, treats ä as a plain a, so Bär files next to Bar. Phonebook order treats ä as ae, which pushes it slightly later. Both are correct German, just used in different places.
Finnish and Swedish are different again: there ä is sorted at the very end of the alphabet, after z, next to å and ö. So a Finnish name list that mixes ä in among the a’s is sorted wrong. If you’re alphabetising names, it’s worth knowing which language’s rules apply.
ä in web addresses, URLs, and email
You can use ä in a domain name. It’s stored as a Punycode address beginning with xn--, which the browser converts back to ä, so a real German domain can look like a run of random letters in its raw form.
Inside a URL path or query, ä is percent-encoded as %C3%A4, the two UTF-8 bytes (0xC3 and 0xA4) for the character. The capital Ä is %C3%84. A link with %C3%A4 in it has an ä inside.
Email is more cautious. An address can carry ä through the same system, but many servers still stumble over non-ASCII addresses, which is one reason a German business will often register both the ä domain and its ae spelling.
ä in code and passwords
In code, ä is an ordinary Unicode character and works fine in strings and comments. The usual snag is encoding: a file saved as UTF-8 but read as Latin-1 turns ä into ä, the classic sign of a crossed encoding rather than a broken character.
Passwords are the place to be careful. A ä in a password can lock you out on another device, because a different keyboard or login form may encode the character differently and produce different bytes. For a password you’ll type across systems, plain ASCII is safer.
When you want ä in code, the escapes help: \u00e4 in JavaScript, Java, JSON, and Python, and ä or ä in HTML.
Copy-paste HTML codes
Everything you need for the web and for links, in one place. Click a cell and copy.
| Character | Named entity | Numeric entity | URL (percent) code |
|---|---|---|---|
| ä | ä | ä | %C3%A4 |
| Ä | Ä | Ä | %C3%84 |
In a CSS content value, use the escaped code point \00e4. Serve the page as UTF-8 so the character holds. For the other umlaut letters ö and ü, the rest of the a family, and every other mark, see the full letters-with-accents list.
Troubleshooting
“My ä shows up as ä or a box.”
The text was saved as UTF-8 but is being read as an older encoding like Latin-1. Set the file or page to UTF-8 and the ä returns. The ä pattern is the classic UTF-8-read-as-Latin-1 mix-up.
“Alt + 0228 just beeps or types nothing.”
Num Lock is off, you’re using the top-row numbers, or the laptop has no keypad. Turn Num Lock on and use the keypad. No keypad? Use the copy grid, the US-International layout, or Windows + .
“A form or username won’t accept ä.”
For German text, type the ae spelling instead: ä becomes ae, so Bäcker becomes Baecker. It’s the accepted substitution and most systems handle it fine.
“A password with ä won’t log me in elsewhere.”
Different keyboards and login forms can encode ä differently, so the bytes may not match what you first set. For a password you’ll type on many devices, stick to plain ASCII.
FAQ
How do I type ä?
On Windows, Alt + 0228 (Alt + 0196 for Ä). On a Mac, Option + u then a. On a phone, long-press the a key. Or click it in the grid above.
How do I write ä without the umlaut?
In German, replace ä with ae, so Müller becomes Mueller and Bäcker becomes Baecker. This is standard and used on passports. It’s a German rule, though, not a general one.
Is ä a separate letter of the alphabet?
In German, no: it’s treated as a variant of a and sorts with the a’s. In Finnish and Swedish, yes: it’s its own letter, sorted at the end of the alphabet with å and ö.
How do I write ä in a URL or HTML?
In a URL, ä is %C3%A4 (Ä is %C3%84), and domains store it as Punycode beginning with xn--. In HTML, use ä or ä.
How do you pronounce ä?
In German it’s an “eh” sound, close to the e in “bed.” In Finnish it’s more like the a in “cat.” It’s not an a and an e said separately.
