Linux compose key: use acute accents and other characters

I’ve always struggled to configure my English keyboard to use Spanish characters like á, é, í, ó, ú, ñ.

I opted to use English keyboard layout instead of my native Spanish layout because it’s faster to write programming characters {}, [], () using Shift instead of Alt GR.

Before the compose key, I needed to change the keyboard layout to Spanish and use a combination of characters to get the character I mentioned.

I’ve finally dedicated some time to figuring it out, and it was quite easy to configure and use these characters!

Configuring compose key

Here’s my setup:

• Keyboard: Atreus
• OS: Arch Linux
• Display Server: Wayland
• Compositor: Sway

Depending on your OS/Display Server, you would need to look up your configuration. Let me know if I can help in the comments :).

I’ve set up the right control as the compose key given that my keyboard has limited keys (atreus). I’ve configured my layout “#1” ctrl key to be right ctrl using chrysalis (UI to configure my keyboard).

Command to get the available compose keys:

grep "compose:" /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst

Test your compose key and combinations with this command for the current sway session:

swaymsg 'input * xkb_options compose:rctrl'

Now that you’ve chosen your compose key, use Sway config to set the compose key on startup:

input type:keyboard xkb_options "compose:rctrl"

Using the compose key

Depending on the character you want, you’ll use different compose sequences. Here are the most common ones.

Useful links

• Compose key (wikipedia)
• Configuring the compose key
• Sway compose key
• Sway input configuration

That’s it! Enjoy using your en_US layout while you also write Spanish, Portuguese, or other languages that make use of acute accents.