Russian, Russian – PC, Russian – QWERTY: Which Mac Layout to Learn
You added a Russian input source. The letters are exactly where you expected them. The full stop is not.
macOS ships three Russian keyboard layouts and does not explain how they differ. I could not find an Apple support page that compares them; the documentation covers how to add an input source, not which one to add. So people add whichever one caught their eye, discover a fortnight later that the comma is on Shift+6, and then have to decide whether to relearn or live with it.
That decision is worth ten minutes, because it is a decision about several years of muscle memory. The whole of it is eight keys and a handful of Option-layer symbols — and one of those eight is broken. When you have chosen, Mochi Type has each of the three as its own course.
Russian and Russian – PC are the same keyboard with the punctuation moved. Every letter of the alphabet but one sits on the identical key in both, so the words you type feel the same either way. What moves is the end of the sentence. On plain Russian the comma and the full stop are up on the number row; on Russian – PC they are both on the key English keyboards use for the slash, which is where Windows and Linux put them.
The third one, Russian – QWERTY, is not a variant of those two. It puts Cyrillic letters on the Latin keys that sound like them, so nothing on it matches a real Russian keyboard. It is the easiest to start on and the most expensive to abandon.
Choosing wrong between the first two costs you eight keys. Choosing the third and changing your mind costs you all thirty-three letters. One more thing worth knowing before you pick: on the keyboard shape Apple ships in the Americas and much of Asia, Russian – PC cannot type a capital Ё at all — plain Russian types it correctly on every shape.
Want to feel the difference before you commit to one? Mochi Type carries all three as separate courses — ЙЦУКЕН, ЙЦУКЕН (PC) and Russian (Phonetic) — each with its own progress, so a fortnight on one is not quietly counted towards another. The first five lessons of every course are free, which is enough to type a few sentences on a layout and find out where its comma is.
It is a typing tutor, not a system utility: it does not change any macOS setting, install a layout, or repair anything on the Mac. The Ё fault below is in the layout macOS ships — the app reports what macOS actually does there rather than quietly correcting it.
What macOS calls them, and what it used to
You are choosing between three things: Apple’s own Russian arrangement, the same letters with Windows punctuation, and a beginner’s keyboard that puts Cyrillic on the Latin keys that sound like them. The list you pick from says none of that. It gives you three names, and one of them is not the name nearly everything written about that layout uses.
The names in System Settings have drifted from the names in every guide written about them. On macOS 26.6 (build 25G72), asking Text Input Services for the localised name of each source returns this:
| Input source identifier | Name macOS shows |
|---|---|
com.apple.keylayout.Russian | Russian |
com.apple.keylayout.RussianWin | Russian – PC |
com.apple.keylayout.Russian-Phonetic | Russian – QWERTY |
The separator is an en dash, U+2013, not a hyphen — worth knowing if you are searching your own system logs.
The third row is the one that trips people. The identifier still says Phonetic, nearly everything written about it online says phonetic, and the list in System Settings says Russian – QWERTY. I could not establish which macOS release renamed it. Treat “Russian – Phonetic” and “Russian – QWERTY” as the same layout under two names.
Eight keys separate Russian from Russian – PC
These two are not two different keyboards. They are one keyboard with the punctuation rearranged. Every letter you type a word with is in the same place on both, which is why the wrong choice does not announce itself — you find out at the end of a sentence, and by then you have had the layout a fortnight.
Which keys, then? Eight of them, and six of the eight are punctuation.
Both are ЙЦУКЕН. Both put й on Q, ф on A, я on Z. I asked macOS’s own key-translation service, UCKeyTranslate, for the output of every key position in all four modifier states on both layouts, and every one of the 32 Cyrillic letters other than ё is on the identical physical key. What differs is punctuation, plus where ё lives.
Want to see all eight? On a standard ANSI keyboard — the shape Apple ships in the Americas and much of Asia, where Europe gets ISO — these eight keys differ unshifted and shifted, and no others:
| Physical key (US legend) | Key code | Russian | Russian – PC |
|---|---|---|---|
` ~ (left of 1) | 50 | ] [ | ё Ë |
4 | 21 | 4 % | 4 ; |
5 | 23 | 5 : | 5 % |
6 | 22 | 6 , | 6 : |
7 | 26 | 7 . | 7 ? |
8 | 28 | 8 ; | 8 * |
\ | (right of ъ) | 42 | ё Ё | \ / |
/ ? | 44 | / ? | . , |
Read the last row first, because it is the one that sends people looking for this page.
On plain Russian, the comma is Shift+6 and the full stop is Shift+7. They are not anywhere else. The /? key gives you a slash and a question mark, exactly as it does in English.
On Russian – PC, the full stop and the comma are both on the /? key — unshifted and shifted respectively — and the question mark moves to Shift+7. That is the standard ЙЦУКЕН arrangement Windows and Linux use, which is what the “PC” in the name means.
The other six rows are consequences of the same shuffle. Plain Russian pushes : and ; up to Shift+5 and Shift+8; Russian – PC uses Shift+6 and Shift+4 for them, and hands Shift+8 back to the asterisk.
Those eight are the whole story in the unshifted and shifted states — the two you write sentences in. The Option layer is not so tidy: more than twenty key positions differ there, most of them symbols you will never reach for. Two of them you will, if you write Russian properly rather than just typing it. The guillemets — the correct Russian quotation marks — move: on plain Russian, » is Option+= and « is Option+Shift+=; on Russian – PC, « is Option+ж or Option+ъ, and » is the same two keys with Shift added. Shift+2 for " and Shift+3 for № are the same on both.
On an ISO keyboard the same eight-key story holds with one substitution: key code 50 is the key beside the left Shift rather than the one left of 1, and it gives ] [ on both layouts, while Russian – PC’s ё moves to key code 10, the key left of 1. One more key code in the table stands somewhere else on that shape, because the shape moves it and not the layout: key code 42 — plain Russian’s ё — drops onto the home row beside Return instead of standing right of ъ. If you are unsure which shape you own, the MacBook keyboard hardware guide settles it.
The ё problem, and where macOS gets it wrong
One letter in the alphabet is handled badly, and it is worth knowing which one before you choose. On Russian – PC, on the keyboard shape Apple ships in the Americas and much of Asia, holding Shift to make a capital Ё hands you a Latin letter instead — an E with two dots over it. It looks near enough right on screen, and later on nothing will find it.
That is not a mistake you are making, and it is not a setting you have missed. It is what the layout does. Here is the detail.
Two codepoints do all the work here:
ё U+0451 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IO decimal 1105
Ё U+0401 CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IO decimal 1025On plain Russian, ё is the \ key (key code 42) and Shift on that key returns a correct Ё. Nothing to report.
On Russian – PC, ё moves to the key left of 1, matching Windows. On an ISO keyboard that is key code 10, and Shift there returns a correct Ё, U+0401.
On an ANSI keyboard, that key is key code 50 — and Shift on key code 50 under Russian – PC returns:
Ë U+00CB LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH DIAERESIS decimal 203A Latin letter. It looks close enough to pass a glance and will fail any search, sort or spellcheck you run afterwards.
Cyrillic Ё does exist in the Russian – PC layout, but only on key code 10 — the ISO key an ANSI keyboard does not physically have; Shift there gives it, and so does Caps Lock. I checked all eight modifier states on that key (plain, Shift, Caps Lock, Caps+Shift, Option, Option+Shift, and both Caps+Option combinations): none of them produce U+0401. On an ANSI Mac keyboard, Russian – PC cannot type a capital Ё at all.
If you need Ё and you are on Russian – PC with an ANSI board, your options are to switch momentarily to plain Russian, paste it, or set up a Text Replacement. It is not a setting you have missed.
Russian – QWERTY is not a variant, it is a different alphabet
The third layout is not a third opinion about punctuation. It is a different keyboard. It takes each Cyrillic letter and puts it on the Latin key that sounds like it, so you can read the keycaps you already have and start typing Russian this afternoon.
The two layouts above disagree about eight keys and agree about every letter. This one moves all thirty-three.
The two ЙЦУКЕН layouts are eight keys apart. Russian – QWERTY (the one whose identifier says Phonetic) is a different keyboard entirely: Cyrillic mapped onto Latin sound-alikes. а on A, с on S, д on D, ф on F — the home row reads а с д ф г ч й к л ; ’ instead of ф ы в а п р о л д ж э. Not one of the 33 Russian letters lands on the same physical key in both. Punctuation goes back where an English typist expects it: comma and full stop on the , and . keys, question mark on Shift+/. And ё is not on a key of its own at all — it is Option+е or Option+2.
It is the easiest of the three to start on if you are reading Latin keycaps, and it is the one to be careful about, because nothing you build on it transfers. Every physical Russian keyboard, every Windows PC in an office, every internet café in the country is ЙЦУКЕН.
One rule
If you will ever type Russian on anything other than your Mac, learn Russian – PC. Work laptops, a desktop PC at home, a remote session, a borrowed machine — all of them use the PC arrangement, and the eight keys above are exactly the eight you would otherwise get wrong everywhere else. If you own a keyboard with Cyrillic legends, check what is printed on the key right of ю before deciding; I have not inspected Apple’s Russian-market keycaps and cannot tell you what they say.
If your Mac is the only place you type Russian, plain Russian is a defensible choice. It keeps / and ? where English keeps them, which is genuinely worth something if you switch language mid-sentence all day, and it types Ё correctly on every keyboard shape.
Take Russian – QWERTY only as a deliberate short-term measure, or if you are certain you will never touch a Cyrillic-labelled keyboard.
And the reassuring part of the arithmetic: choosing wrong between the two ЙЦУКЕН layouts costs you eight keys, six of which are punctuation. Choosing phonetic and changing your mind costs you all thirty-three letters — none of them survives the move. That asymmetry is the actual decision — and it is one you can test rather than argue: an evening on each, without switching your Mac’s input source, settles it faster than any table.
Practising the layout you chose, in Mochi Type
You do not need an app to make this decision; you need it to make the choice stick, because the eight keys are the last thing a general typing course teaches and the first thing you get wrong under pressure.
Two things matter when picking any tool for this. It has to know that Russian and Russian – PC are different keyboards — a tutor with one generic “Russian” cannot teach the comma, because it does not know where the comma is. And it has to be able to drill a layout that is not currently your system input source, or you spend the lesson toggling; practising a layout without switching input source covers that separately.
Mochi Type carries all three as separate layouts — ЙЦУКЕН, ЙЦУКЕН (PC) and Russian (Phonetic). In practice that means the choice you just made is a choice of course, and the courses do not bleed into one another: progress is stored per language-and-layout pair, so the two ЙЦУКЕН tracks have separate stage numbers and separate per-key statistics.
The Russian course runs 11 letter groups plus 5 advanced stages and a Final Test, with ё taught in the last letter group alongside ъ, and speed reads in CPM by default when the language resolved at first launch is Russian. The first five stages of every course are free, in every language, along with all the layouts and the full statistics — enough to try both ЙЦУКЕН variants before you commit. Past that, the whole of it is a single $12.99 unlock, no subscription.
If you do want the mechanical version: its key tables are machine-extracted from macOS’s own keyboard layout files by a compiled Carbon tool, and a test diffs them back against the live system — 48 layouts, 48 key codes and 4 modifier states each, for every Apple input source installed on the machine running it. That is why the Ë above is reproduced rather than quietly corrected: the table says what macOS says.
And what it does not do: it is a typing tutor, not a system utility. It does not change any macOS setting, install a layout, or repair anything on the Mac. It cannot give Russian – PC a working capital Ё on an ANSI keyboard either — that fault is in the layout macOS ships, and the three workarounds above are still your options.
CPM and WPM, and why Russian numbers look big
Once you start practising you will run into speeds quoted in two different units, and Russian ones look enormous. A Russian course advertising 250 sounds like a different species of typist from an English test quoting 250. It is the same typist. The two numbers are counting different things, and one is five times the other.
Russian typing courses count знаки в минуту — characters per minute. English-language tests count words per minute, where a “word” is a fixed convention of five characters and has nothing to do with real words in any language.
So the two units differ by exactly five, and no information is lost either way:
| CPM | WPM |
|---|---|
| 150 | 30 |
| 200 | 40 |
| 250 | 50 |
| 300 | 60 |
| 400 | 80 |
The trap is comparing across sources without noticing. A Russian site quoting 250 and an English site quoting 250 are describing typists five times apart. If a figure came from a Russian-language course or a Russian typing test, it is almost certainly CPM.
Because the “word” is defined as five characters rather than measured, WPM is already language-neutral: a Russian typist and an English typist striking keys at the same rate get the same WPM, whatever their average word length. CPM is not a more accurate unit — it is a more familiar one.
If you type Ukrainian as well, the same three-way split exists there with different names and a different sore point: the Ukrainian apostrophe and the missing Щ.
Common questions
What is the difference between Russian and Russian – PC on a Mac?
Only punctuation and ё. All 32 other Cyrillic letters sit on identical physical keys in both layouts. Asking macOS to translate every key position on both, exactly eight keys of the alphanumeric block differ in the two states you type sentences in — unshifted and shifted — on an ANSI keyboard: the key left of 1, the 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 keys, the backslash key, and the /? key. The Option layer is untidier and differs on more than twenty keys, which is where the guillemets « » move. On plain Russian the comma is Shift+6 and the full stop is Shift+7; on Russian – PC both live on the /? key, unshifted for the full stop and shifted for the comma, exactly as on Windows.
Why is the question mark in the wrong place on my Russian keyboard?
Because you are on Apple's plain Russian layout and you learned the Windows one, or the reverse. On macOS's Russian layout the question mark is Shift and the /? key (key code 44). On Russian – PC it is Shift+7 (key code 26), which is where every Windows and Linux ЙЦУКЕН keyboard puts it. Nothing is broken; these are two different punctuation arrangements over the same letter positions.
Why does Shift+ё give me Ë instead of Ё on my Mac?
Because you are on Russian – PC with an ANSI keyboard, and the layout is defective there. On macOS 26.6 (build 25G72), Russian – PC maps ё (U+0451) onto key code 50 — the key left of 1 on an ANSI board — and Shift on that key returns Ë, U+00CB, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH DIAERESIS, decimal 203, not Cyrillic Ё, U+0401, decimal 1025. Ё exists in that layout only on key code 10 — the ISO key an ANSI keyboard does not physically have — and no combination of Shift, Caps Lock and Option on key code 50 reaches it. Plain Russian has no such problem: ё is the backslash key and Shift there returns a correct Ё.
Should I learn Russian – Phonetic on a Mac?
Only if you will never sit at a Cyrillic-labelled keyboard. macOS 26.6 calls it Russian – QWERTY, though its identifier is still com.apple.keylayout.Russian-Phonetic and most writing online calls it phonetic. It maps Cyrillic onto Latin sound-alikes — а on A, с on S, д on D — so it is easy for a beginner reading Latin keycaps, and it shares not one letter position with the ЙЦУКЕН arrangement that every physical Russian keyboard in the world is printed with: all 33 letters of the alphabet sit somewhere else. Choosing wrong between the two ЙЦУКЕН layouts costs you eight keys; choosing phonetic and later regretting it costs you the whole alphabet.
Is Russian typing speed measured in WPM or CPM?
Russian typing schools count знаки в минуту — characters per minute. English-language tests count words per minute, where a word is defined as five characters regardless of language. The two differ by exactly a factor of five: 200 CPM is 40 WPM, 300 CPM is 60 WPM. Mochi Type computes both from the same counter — WPM is correct characters divided by five divided by elapsed minutes, and CPM is that same figure multiplied back by five — and starts in CPM when the language it resolves to on first launch is Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian or German.
If I switch Russian layouts, do I lose my typing progress?
In Mochi Type, no — but you do not carry it over either. Progress is stored per (language, layout) pair, so ЙЦУКЕН and ЙЦУКЕН (PC) are separate tracks with separate stage numbers and separate per-key statistics. That is the honest model: the punctuation habits genuinely do not transfer, so a track that claimed they did would be lying to you. The first five lessons of every course are free in every language and on every layout, which is enough to try a layout before committing.