Aloha mai kākou! Every computer, tablet and phone sold today can type ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi properly, with the real ʻokina and kahakō. The Hawaiian keyboard is already built in (or is a free download on some Android tablets). You only need to switch it on once, and this guide shows you how.
Choose your device
iPhone and Android phone instructions are coming soon. Until then, the iPad and Android tablet steps are very close to what you will see on a phone.
Why use the Hawaiian keyboard?
The ʻokina and kahakō are part of how Hawaiian words are spelled, and they change meaning: pau (finished) and paʻu (soot), kau (to place) and kāu (yours). A look-alike, such as an apostrophe or a curly quote, may look close enough on screen, but computers treat it as a different character. That means:
- searching for a word may not find it, or finds the wrong words
- spell checkers, dictionaries and sorting get confused
- screen readers for people with low vision read the word incorrectly
- typing games and online quizzes mark the answer wrong
The Hawaiian keyboard types the correct characters every time, with no copying and pasting.
The characters to look for
| Character | Name | Technical name (Unicode) |
|---|---|---|
| ʻ | ʻokina | modifier letter turned comma, U+02BB |
| ā ē ī ō ū | kahakō vowels | vowels with macron, U+0101 U+0113 U+012B U+014D U+016B |
| Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū | capital kahakō vowels | U+0100 U+0112 U+012A U+014C U+016A |
Common look-alikes that are not the ʻokina: the straight apostrophe ', the curly quotes ‘ ’ and the backtick `. Common mistakes for the kahakō: å, á, à, â, ä or ă. These usually mean the English keyboard is still switched on.
Test your keyboard
Once your keyboard is switched on, type the line in the box below. Each Hawaiian letter lights up green when your device produces the real character. If something is wrong, the box tells you exactly what you typed and how to fix it. What you type never leaves your device.
Hoʻāʻo: test your Hawaiian keyboard
Type this line exactly as you see it. Each letter below lights up when your device types it correctly.
ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi: ʻāina, ʻēheu, ʻīlio, ʻōpae, ʻūlili
- ʻʻokina
- ā
- ē
- ī
- ō
- ū
- Ōcapital
Show the character codes I typed
What you type stays on your device. To improve these guides, the site keeps an anonymous count of how the test goes on each kind of device: no names, no cookies, no IP addresses.
This test needs JavaScript turned on in your browser.
Related reading
For many years, the most-used instructions for typing Hawaiian were guides written at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo in the 1990s, when the very first Hawaiian keyboards for Mac and PC were created. Devices have changed many times since then. ʻŌlelo Online keeps these pages up to date so there is always one current place to look.