Pilcrow

How-to

How to type accents on iPhone: four ways, from long-press to none at all

Published · 5 min read

Most accented letters you will need are already on the iPhone keyboard, just hidden. Which way of reaching them is best depends on how often you need them: once a week for a borrowed word like café, or in every sentence you write.

In short. Touch and hold a letter, slide to the accented version, and let go. If you write a language with accents every day, add a keyboard for it in Settings › General › Keyboard › Keyboards. For a handful of words you use often, set up Text Replacement. Or use a keyboard that restores accents when you type without them.

1. Touch and hold the letter

On Apple’s keyboard, in any app:

  1. Touch and hold the plain letter, for example e.
  2. A row of accented versions appears above your finger.
  3. Slide onto the one you want, such as é, and lift.

Apple notes that the same works for numbers and symbols: holding a key reveals the characters related to it. It is the quickest method for occasional accents, and all you need for the odd naïve, jalapeño or résumé.

The catch: it is slow when accents are frequent. Every accented letter becomes a hold, a slide and a release instead of a tap, and on a long message that adds up.

2. Add a keyboard for the language

If you write a language with accents regularly, its own keyboard puts the letters where they belong, and where Apple offers autocorrection for that language, the corrections know its words, accents included.

  1. Open Settings › General › Keyboard.
  2. Tap Keyboards, then Add New Keyboard.
  3. Choose the language from the list.

To switch while typing, touch and hold the emoji key or the globe key and pick the keyboard. For some language pairs, Apple offers a bilingual keyboard instead (Add to [language] Keyboard), which follows you between two languages without switching. Apple also notes that adding a keyboard for a language adds that language to your iPhone’s Preferred Languages list, which you can reorder in Settings › General › Language & Region if apps and websites start showing that language.

The catch: switching keyboards mid-message is a chore, and outside the pairs Apple supports, the keyboard for one language treats words from the other as typos. How to type in two languages on iPhone covers what to do then.

3. Text Replacement for words you use often

For a few words you type all the time, a shortcut is faster than any long-press. In Settings › General › Keyboard › Text Replacement, tap the plus button, type the accented word as the Phrase and something short as the Shortcut. Apple’s own example turns “GM” into “Good morning”.

Pick a shortcut that is not itself a word you use, or it will be replaced every time you type it. A name that needs accents is a good candidate, particularly if autocorrect keeps changing it.

4. Let the keyboard put them back

The fourth way is not to type the accents at all, and let the keyboard restore them. If you already skip accents on your phone, the result depends entirely on the keyboard. A keyboard can only put an accent back if it knows the accented word, and if it is confident enough that the plain spelling is not what you meant.

That second condition is the limit for any keyboard. When a word is correct both with and without its accent, and the accent changes the meaning, the letters alone cannot tell which you meant. Those are the words where a long-press is still the answer.

A note on punctuation

Apple notes that holding a number or symbol key works the same way, revealing the characters related to it, which is worth exploring for punctuation you cannot find. And to end a sentence quickly, Apple’s keyboard lets you double-tap the space bar to get a period and a space.

How Pilcrow handles accents

Pilcrow, the keyboard we make, was built for people who type with accents all day and for people who skip them.

  • Type without them, get them back. In languages that use accents, Pilcrow restores missing accents 74–85 % of the time when a word is typed without them, measured per language on held-out text. Since version 1.1.1 that includes words missing two of them.
  • Long-press reaches every language you use. Hold a letter and the accents come from every language you have enabled, whichever one you happen to be typing in.
  • Swipe the plain letters. When you swipe, accented letters are read from the key you can actually reach, so the accented word comes out without aiming for it. More on that in swipe typing on iPhone.
  • One layout for all your languages. Enable several and type each on the layout your fingers already know, keeping every letter each language needs.
  • Your own symbol keys. Put the characters you use most on the number and symbol keys, under Settings › Keys & layout.
  • Punctuation that behaves. Double-space for a period, smart quotes and dashes are all switchable, and quotes stay straight in web addresses, e-mail fields and password boxes, where a curly one would break the value.

It types in forty languages, and you can enable as many as you write.

The Languages screen: a primary language and layout picker, a switch for detecting language automatically, and a list of languages with download sizes and toggles.
Pilcrow’s Languages screen: enable several, and pick the layout your fingers know.

Last checked October 2026 against Apple’s iPhone User Guide for iOS 27. If anything here is out of date, write to info@pilcrowtype.com.

Sources

  1. Apple, Type with the onscreen keyboard on iPhone (accents by touch and hold; double-tap the space bar for a period)
  2. Apple, Add or change keyboards on iPhone (adding and switching keyboards; bilingual keyboards; Preferred Languages)
  3. Apple, Set up shorthand for frequently used text on iPhone (Text Replacement)
  4. Apple, How to use Auto-Correction and predictive text on your iPhone (the “GM” example)

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