How to Add the Ukrainian Keyboard Layout on a Mac

A new Mac comes with one layout - the one you picked during setup. Everything else you add yourself. Adding Ukrainian takes about a minute, but macOS offers three different Ukrainian layouts, and that's where people get stuck: you add one, and then spend two weeks wondering where Ґ went.

Here's how to add it, which variant to pick, and what to set up right after.

Adding the layout

Open System Settings → Keyboard.
Next to Input Sources, click Edit.
Press + at the bottom left.
Find Ukrainian in the list, pick a variant (more on that below), click Add.

That's it. The layout is in your rotation now, and the input menu appears in the menu bar.

If you don't see the indicator in the top-right corner, turn on "Show input menu in menu bar" in the same window - it's the fastest way to always know which language you're typing in.

Three Ukrainian layouts: which one to pick

In the list you'll see roughly these:

Ukrainian - matches the standard Windows Ukrainian layout. If you're coming from Windows or work across both systems, take this one: your muscle memory carries over intact. On older macOS versions it's called Ukrainian – PC.
Ukrainian – Legacy - Apple's own older variant (on older macOS versions it's just Ukrainian). Same letters, but the punctuation and the placement of Ґ and the apostrophe differ from what Windows taught you.
Ukrainian – QWERTY - Cyrillic letters mapped onto the QWERTY positions of their Latin lookalikes. Handy if you never learned the standard layout and type by "sounds like".

The practical advice: Ukrainian for anyone who has ever typed Ukrainian on Windows, Ukrainian – QWERTY for anyone starting from scratch on a Mac. Nothing stops you from adding two and dropping the one that loses.

Where Ґ and the apostrophe are

This is the first question everyone asks, and the answer depends on the variant you picked. In the standard Ukrainian layout the apostrophe is on the \ key and Ґ is on the ` key; exact positions for every layout and keyboard type, plus ₴, « » and dashes, are in a separate guide to the Ukrainian apostrophe on Mac.

To check on your own Mac, look at the actual keyboard:

System Settings → Keyboard → turn on "Show Input menu in menu bar", then click the indicator and choose Show Keyboard Viewer. An on-screen keyboard appears showing the live layout - switch to Ukrainian and you'll see exactly which key gives you Ґ and which one gives the apostrophe. Hold Shift and Option to see what's hidden on those levels too.

Thirty seconds with the Keyboard Viewer beats a week of trial and error.

Turn on Ukrainian spellcheck

Adding the layout doesn't teach macOS to check Ukrainian spelling - that's a separate setting.

System Settings → Keyboard → Text Input → Edit → Spelling, and pick Ukrainian (or "Automatic by Language" if you switch between languages constantly). Without this, everything you type in Ukrainian gets underlined in red as one big mistake, and people usually just turn spellcheck off entirely instead of fixing it.

While you're in there, it's worth looking at autocorrect too: macOS auto-capitalization and smart quotes behave differently in Ukrainian than you'd expect, and it's easier to turn off what bothers you now than to fight it later.

Order and extra layouts

Two things worth doing right after you add the layout:

Drop what you don't use. Every layout in the list is one more stop in the rotation, and switching becomes guesswork. Type in two languages? Keep exactly two. Everything else - select and press the minus.
Mind the order. Layouts are listed in the order they switch through. Put the two you actually type in next to each other; anything rare goes at the end of the list.

How to switch now

Out of the box it's Ctrl+Space (previous input source) and Ctrl+Option+Space (next one), plus the 🌐 Globe key on recent Apple keyboards. If Ctrl+Space clashes with your editor, or you'd rather switch with Caps Lock, there's a separate guide on switching layouts and rebinding the shortcut.

The part that stays broken

The layout is added, the shortcut is set, and one thing is still true: switching is manual. You start a Ukrainian sentence with English still active, notice three words later, and retype it. Adding a layout doesn't fix that - the mistake happens faster than you can see it.

That's what our app Boomkey is for. When a word comes out in the wrong layout, you hit space and it fixes itself (beta, English ↔ Ukrainian, Belarusian, Hebrew, Russian) - or you double-tap Shift and the selected text converts between any two layouts you have installed. If a whole paragraph in the wrong alphabet already happened, there's a separate guide on fixing it.

It's a native menu bar app, everything runs locally on your Mac, one-time purchase with a 7-day trial - no card, no account.

But do the basics first: add the standard Ukrainian layout, check Ґ in the Keyboard Viewer, turn on spellcheck, delete the layouts you never type in. Five minutes, and the second language stops feeling like a guest on your Mac.

Once the layout is installed, see fixing Ukrainian-English layout mistakes for the key map and how to convert text you already typed.