How to type Chinese with Jyutping 粵拼 on Mac

As a person who has been typing Chinese with Simplified Cangjie (速成) for more than a decade, I still come across with characters that I can’t type. Usually I end up with typing them with their Mandarin pinyin or just endlessly trying to find the right keystrokes. It obviously takes a lot of time, especially to those who are not familiar with pinyin, so Jyutping can come in handy. I faced some difficulties while installing different input methods for Jyutping partly because of my lack of knowledge in computer and partly because some guidelines are unclear. And some of the input methods are available in Chinese only. So I think I can help others by typing a guideline.

There are several popular ways of typing with Jyutping.

1/ Google Cantonese Input Method

http://www.google.com.hk/intl/zh-TW/landing/suggest/

Google has already made a video on how to install the input method:

But if you are like me, who doesn’t like to rely on Google on everything, you may want to try other ways.

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2/ Squirrel 

http://rime.im/

1. Go to the website and click the blue button on the page to download the file

2. Install the software

3. Switch the input method to Squirrel

4. Click on the input method icon -> Setting

5. A folder named “Rime” will open. Look for a file called “default.yaml” and open it with TextEdit

6. Go to the “schema_list” row and add/change one of the items into “jyutping”. It should look like this afterwards:

There are several other options with Rime, e.g. zhuyin, Cangjie, Luna Pinyin. You can add others in the same way if you want. Here’s the list of available options.

	# default.custom.yaml
	# save it to:
	# ~/.config/ibus/rime (linux)
	# ~/Library/Rime (macos)
	# %APPDATA%\Rime (windows)
	patch:
	schema_list:
	– schema: luna_pinyin # 朙月拼音
	– schema: luna_pinyin_simp # 朙月拼音 简化字模式
	– schema: luna_pinyin_tw # 朙月拼音 臺灣正體模式
	– schema: terra_pinyin # 地球拼音 dì qiú pīn yīn
	– schema: bopomofo # 注音
	– schema: bopomofo_tw # 注音 臺灣正體模式
	– schema: jyutping # 粵拼
	– schema: cangjie5 # 倉頡五代
	– schema: cangjie5_express # 倉頡 快打模式
	– schema: quick5 # 速成
	– schema: wubi86 # 五笔86
	– schema: wubi_pinyin # 五笔拼音混合輸入
	– schema: double_pinyin # 自然碼雙拼
	– schema: double_pinyin_mspy # 微軟雙拼
	– schema: double_pinyin_abc # 智能ABC雙拼
	– schema: double_pinyin_flypy # 小鶴雙拼
	– schema: wugniu # 吳語上海話（新派）
	– schema: wugniu_lopha # 吳語上海話（老派）
	– schema: sampheng # 中古漢語三拼
	– schema: zyenpheng # 中古漢語全拼
	– schema: ipa_xsampa # X-SAMPA 國際音標
	– schema: emoji # emoji表情

view raw

default.custom.yaml

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

7. Save and close the file

8. Click the input method icon again -> Deploy

Then you can start using it to type!

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3/OpenVanilla

https://openvanilla.org/

1. Download by clicking the blue words (由此處下載) in the page (circled in the screenshots)

2. Install the software

3. Download the jyutping.cin data file (I do not own this file. The link is from OpenVanilla official website)

4. Switch the input method to OpenVanilla

5. Click the input method icon -> OpenVanilla Preferences -> add new input method

6. Import the jyutping.cin data file you have downloaded.

You can start typing now!

Note that for OpenVanilla, you also need to type in the tones to get the characters, but not for Squirrel. This is because the .cin data file includes the tones as well

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You can also type Chinese with Yahoo! Key Key

 4/ Yahoo! Key Key 奇摩輸入法

There’s already a detailed guideline on how to type with Cantonese Pinyin (廣東話拼音) using Yahoo! Key Key:

http://blog.theoryspace.com/2009/01/05/how-to-type-chinese-on-a-mac-with-cantonese-pinyin/

But Cantonese Pinyin is quite different from Jyutping. You may replace the canton.cin listed in the page with jyutping.cin (please find the link of the data file in method 3), and, when you click on the input method icon, check “Cantonese” instead of “Canton”. Then it’s all set!

Again, if you use the jyutping.cin data file from OpenVanilla, you need to type the tones to get the characters because the .cin data file includes the tones.

Also, please note that Yahoo! has stopped developing and supporting Yahoo! Key Key since Jan, 2013.

Hope this helps!