From time to time I need to type Chinese on my computer. I looked in the resource section but it’s out of date.
A quick google search got me this far: wikihow.com/Type-Toned-Pinyin-on-a-Mac
But that means that US Keyboard is the input method. In order to use Mac OS’s built-in dictionary, I need to type with the Pinyin - Traditional input method. There doesn’t seem to be a way to add tone marks here. Does anyone know how to do this?
[quote=“rocky raccoon”]From time to time I need to type Chinese on my computer. I looked in the resource section but it’s out of date.
A quick google search got me this far: wikihow.com/Type-Toned-Pinyin-on-a-Mac
But that means that US Keyboard is the input method. In order to use Mac OS’s built-in dictionary, I need to type with the Pinyin - Traditional input method. There doesn’t seem to be a way to add tone marks here. Does anyone know how to do this?[/quote]
To clarify: do you want pinyin as the end result, or Chinese characters? Shìlín or 士林?
If you’re not looking for typing pinyin, then the below isn’t going to help you.
For displaying pinyin on a Mac: System Preferences / Keyboard / Input Sources / + / (choose English) / scroll down for “U.S. Extended”. (That’s on my computer now, but I don’t remember at all if it’s something I had to install years ago, or if it’s always there.)
And then when typing: for first tone, type “Option-a” and then the letter. For second tone, “Option-e” and then the letter. Third tone, “Option-v” and then the otter. Fourth tone, “Option-`” (top row, next to the “1” key) and then the letter. For umlaut-u: whatever tone mark, plus “v”, so “Option-a” “v” gets you ǖ.
I just keep U.S. Extended as the default on my Mac - it’s the only English language set currently active.
(Oh … now that I’ve finally followed your link, I see that I’ve basically just repeated what that page advises. So that’s probably not much good for you then. Sorry!)
Yep, I’m looking for the latter: typing pinyin (with tones) to get the character. I guess that maybe it’s not a common usage method? Typing pinyin does the trick but then you have to sift through all of the different tones to find the correct character. I was hoping to find a way to eliminate other characters because my recognition is very poor.
Thanks for taking the time to write out the instructions above, should be helpful for others who need to “print” pinyin writing. 
I do the same as you, “Typing pinyin does the trick but then you have to sift through all of the different tones to find the correct character” on my Mac. I don’t know if there is a better input method built in to Mac or if additional software is needed. I don’t know tones well, so I prefer to just sift through the characters…
OK, apologies for misunderstanding. To be honest the issue doesn’t come up for me very often - usually if I type the pinyin string, the predicted character output is fine, and I don’t need to sift through them all.
The other day mind you I was adding some form of the single syllable “ji” (I can’t recall the character now) to a flashcard list in Pleco, and yeah, that took a long time.
If I wanted a specific character (and especially if I didn’t know the pronunciation), I used to use a Mac touchpad I’d bought, but that went on the fritz a few months ago.
On a pinyin related note:
does anyone know how to input two character words that have the same spelling in pinyin as a single syllable word? (does that question even make sense?)
For instance, today I wanted to type the word “飢餓”, but when I entered the pinyin “jie” the first few lists of results were single characters such as 街、介、接etc. The word I was looking for only appeared on the fourth list of results. According to Pleco there should be an apostrophe between the ji and the e to look like “ji’e” (with tone marks). Does anyone know if it is possible to type this information in to find the words I am looking for more easily?
I also use google translate when I’m having challenges with Mac when inputting pinyin. Input English, it outputs Chinese and Pinyin with tone marks
[quote=“Milkybar_Kid”]On a pinyin related note:
does anyone know how to input two character words that have the same spelling in pinyin as a single syllable word? (does that question even make sense?)
For instance, today I wanted to type the word “飢餓”, but when I entered the pinyin “jie” the first few lists of results were single characters such as 街、介、接etc. The word I was looking for only appeared on the fourth list of results. According to Pleco there should be an apostrophe between the ji and the e to look like “ji’e” (with tone marks). Does anyone know if it is possible to type this information in to find the words I am looking for more easily?[/quote]
On my Mac typing an apostrophe between the two syllables does that for me. For example, if I type “jie” I get 姐, 姊, and 接 as the first results. But if I type “ji’e” I get 饑餓, 飢餓, and 嫉惡 as the first three results.