To Type in Russian on PC

If you are studying Russian and need to practice typing in Cyrillic then this post is for you, as there is no other way to type (and write) in Russian than in Cyrillic. Those who think differently are wrong. If your teacher says the opposite to you then you have a wrong teacher.

This post is basically a free narration of two my earlier posts in Russian: "Печатать по-русски" and "Транслитная клавиатура" destined to Russian immigrants all over the world.

There exist several  popular ways of typing in Russian:

To purchase Russian keyboard or keyboard stickers. While this method is a good recommendation for Russians, I wouldn't recommend it for non-Russians, unless you are a professional translator. If you decide to choose this variant then setup the standard Russian keyboard layout, which exists on all OS's for PC's. I mean Windows, Mac OS, Linuxes. Tablets and smartphone OS's are not covered by this post.

To use some on-line keyboard. I recommend to use this way of typing for Russian tourists in the Internet cafes, where no other method is available. Try, for example, the translit.ru.

To use the transliteration keyboard layout.
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If you do not know what is transliteration keyboard layout then start with the video below. The comments in video are in Russian, the Latin keyboard layout is Spanish.

I consider the transliteration keyboard layout as the best solution and recommend it to all: Russian immigrants and non-Russians studying Russian. The transliteration keyboard layout (unfortunately better known under the wrong name "phonetic keyboard layout") is a system keyboard layout, which means that it is supported on the OS level (Windows, Mac OS, Linux), i.e. switching between EN and RU will be by usual Alt+Shift:

On modern OS's the transliteration keyboard may already be installed. Look for "Russian phonetic keyboard layout". If you have it in your OS then this is what you need (if your Latin keyboard layout is English (USA) QWERTY, otherwise, e.g. in case of German QWERTZ or French AZERTY keyboards, the the transliteration keyboard layout can be not so easy to use).

Luckily Microsoft released a program for creating custom keyboard layouts for Windows: Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC). I created many layouts for different keyboards with the program. You can download them here:
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