Quick answer
The standard layout is called ЙЦУКЕН after its first six keys. It is not related to QWERTY, so the letters are in unfamiliar places.
Turning it on
| Device | How |
|---|---|
| Windows | Settings → Time & Language → Language → add Russian; switch with Win + Space |
| Mac | System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → add Russian; switch with Ctrl + Space |
| iPhone / iPad | Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add Russian |
| Android | Settings → Languages → Keyboard → add Russian |
On a phone, long-pressing a letter gives you ё and the hard sign. On a physical keyboard, Russian stickers or a printed layout taped next to the screen beat memorising for the first few weeks.
The phonetic alternative
A phonetic layout maps Russian letters onto the Latin keys that sound like them: A → а, S → с, D → д. It is much faster to start with, and both Windows and Mac offer it (“Russian – Phonetic” or similar). The catch: if you later use a Russian keyboard in Russia, none of it transfers.
Our recommendation: phonetic if you type Russian occasionally, ЙЦУКЕН if you expect to write a lot. Learning ЙЦУКЕН properly takes a few weeks of real typing.
Stress marks and ё
Stress marks are not on any keyboard, because Russians do not type them. On this site they are added as combining acute accents. If you need one, the sequence is the vowel followed by Unicode U+0301 — which is also why you should never type á with a Latin letter: it looks the same and breaks every search.
Ё and the hard sign
On ЙЦУКЕН, ё sits alone to the left of the number row, and ъ is next to х. Both are easy to lose. Russians themselves often type е for ё, which is why you will read все where всё is meant.
Typical mistakes
Typing á with a Latin accented letter
Use а plus U+0301
A Latin á is not a Cyrillic а — search and audio will both fail.
Expecting ЙЦУКЕН to match QWERTY
It is an unrelated layout
Only the position of the number row carries over.
Check yourself
What is ЙЦУКЕН?