Chinese Computing Help Desk

Chinese Pinyin Setup
in Windows 10

A Quick Start Guide to Setting up Input Methods for
Simplified AND Traditional Chinese Characters
in Non-Chinese versions of Microsoft Windows 10

This is a guide to setting up Chinese input methods in Windows 10. As I explain in more detail in my overview of Chinese language features in this release, at this time I cannot recommend that Windows 7 users upgrade, as many Chinese language features that were missing in Windows 8 are still missing in Windows 10. I plan to write up a new list for Win 10 soon, while expecting (hoping?) to see updates that fix some or all of these problems released in 2016. Meanwhile Windows 8 users should go ahead and install Windows 10, and may benefit from doing so.

On later pages I cover handwriting input and other options. But first, the Hanyu Pinyin Input Method!

You can sync most of your language settings from a previous Windows 8 or 10 installation if you use the same Microsoft account, and many will also survive an upgrade. But some features will often need to be downloaded again, and you will probably need to tweak your settings.

I have to begin with the assumption that you are doing a clean install, so feel free to skip ahead to whatever features or settings you need:

2. Chinese input methods: basic setup (this page)

If you need Pinyin with tone marks, you may be interested in these free downloads:

1. Chinese Input Methods: Basic Setup

In my little collage of images on the right are pieces of the Start menu and the Settings panel.

Open the Start menu and select Settings.

Then in Settings, select «Time & language».

(After this is set up, you can just click at the bottom of the input methods menu. And a right-click on the old-style taskbar input method button goes even deeper)

This will take you to the Time & Language settiings. In the «Region and Language» section, under «Languages», select «Add a language»:

Scroll to the right as needed to find «Chinese (Simplified)» and/or «Chinese (Traditional)» in the list:

«Chinese (Simplified)» actually includes a Traditional character option, and «Chinese (Traditional)» includes a Simplified character option, each with some limitations. I cover this in later pages.

Some of you may choose based on which input method you prefer. But it’s often very important to make your choice based on the region you are in or communicate with most — mainland/Singapore vs. Taiwan/HK/Macau — to match the encoding underlying your documents and messages. This helps avoid future technical problems, like unrecoverable scrambled messages full of question marks, «tofu blocks», and other garbage characters.

To make matters even more confusing, many people in Singapore use the Taiwan or HK locales for Traditional characters, and many in Hong Kong/Macau use the PRC locale for Simplified. And, the Taiwan/HK/Macau settings offer a choice of Big5 or Unicode. It’s best to ask people about their settings before sending much, if they know.

The default Chinese «region» choices are mainland China and Hong Kong for most users of an English-language Windows release. Microsoft has put the Traditional character display language pack downloads only in the Hong Kong settings. (Unlike Windows 8 the Taiwan and Macau locales do offer the handwriting feature, and all include speech.)

When you’re done, back in the Languages section you’ll find the regions you’ve selected. When you click on their names, you’ll be rewarded with the three buttons you see here. For now, select «Options»:

The default keyboard for PRC and Singapore is Microsoft Pinyin. The default keyboard for Taiwan is Microsoft Bopomofo, but for Hong Kong it’s Microsoft Quick (a quicker Cangjie). Click «Add a keyboard» to select another from the menu. A keyboard that has been selected can be removed by clicking on the name and selecting «Remove».

«MS Bopomofo» supports Hanyu Pinyin in addition to Zhuyin Fuhao. On the next page I will show how to change the «Bopomofo» keyboard to Hanyu Pinyin, and on later pages I will also discuss using this IME for Simplified characters, plus using MS Pinyin for Traditional characters, as well as the display language, handwriting, and speech features.

The Cantonese Phonetic input method (Jyutping) was added in an automated update to Windows 10, but it cannot be selected from the menu shown above. See the CPIME FAQ page for help on installing this IME.

Now you can click on the name of each input method editor (IME) you’ve chosen, to get at the Options buttons. Most users of MS Bopomofo will want to read on to the next page, to learn how to switch that IME from Zhuyin to Pinyin. And on subsequent pages, we’ll look into what else is in Options.

See also:
Zhuyin input, symbols, & Zhuyin/Pinyin «ruby text» (Win7, but universal. Includes discussion of the MS Word Phonetic Guide and ruby fonts.)

Chinese Computing Help Desk

Windows 10 Chinese Setup:
Handwriting, Speech, and Language Packs

These are separate downloads in Windows 10

The following instructions assume you have already set up at least one Chinese language and keyboard, as described on the input methods setup page.

As of Windows 10, you do not need to download display languages — «language packs» — unless you want to change the Windows Start menu and other system feaures into another language. In Windows 8 and earlier versions, Chinese handwriting was bundled with the language pack downloads, even though language packs have actually never been required to make Chinese handwriting work — or Chinese typing or reading for that matter.

If you begin at the Language menu and select «Language preferences» as shown here, you will be able to download these items separately.

You can also get to the same place via the Start menu: click «Settings» > then in the Settings panel click «Time & Language», and in that panel go to «Regional settings».

If you are using the classic desktop language bar, I suggest that in this situation you use the Start menu Settings path described in the previous paragraph.

Here’s one reason why:

In the Taiwan and Macau region settings, the old-style desktop control panel will not offer you the handwriting or speech downloads, because — as of the Windows 10 launch, anyway — in that control panel they are still bundled with the language pack, and in the global Windows release, the language pack is not available in the Taiwan or Macau regional settings. For that, you need to select Hong Kong, PRC, or Singapore in your language setup. But in the following new settings panels, handwriting and speech are available separately.

In the «Time & Language» settings panel, under «Region & language», select the Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese language area to reveal the three buttons you see here, then select «Options»:

You’ll find three download buttons available at the top of the next panel, under «Language options». (Again, in the global Windows release, display language packs are available only in the Hong Kong, PRC, and Singapore regions, but if you chose Taiwan or Macau during language setup you’ll only see the download buttons for handwriting and speech.)

Handwriting

Both Simplified and Traditional handwriting are available in the new Touch Keyboard handwriting mode. Most of the information below focuses on that feature.

But first, I should also mention that the original Windows Chinese handwriting feature is still available in the IME Pad for Traditional Chinese:

The Traditional Chinese IME Pad is covered in detail on the advanced features page. On this page we’ll continue discussing the new handwriting features in Windows 10 only.

The Simplified Chinese IME Pad never supported handwriting, only radical and punctuation lookup, but anyway that IME Pad is missing from Windows 10 at launch. I track items like that in my FAQ article titled Missing, Broken, and Just Plain Lame Chinese Features in Windows 10, and will update that list as things change.

Now let’s return to discussing the Touch Keyboard. After handwriting is downloaded and installed per the instructions at the top of this page, you’ll find options where the «Download» buttons had been:
• in your Traditional Chinese language options, you’ll find «Recognize rarely used Chinese, Kanji, or Hanja characters when converting handwriting to typed text», and
• in your Simplified Chinese language options, you’ll find an optional automatic Simplified/Traditional or Traditional/Simplified converter.

The Traditional Chinese «rare character» option disappeared from my system after the July 2016 one-year Anniversary Update. Perhaps now it’s the default? It should be: limiting the number of characters was a goal for older systems with memory and speed limitations most of us no longer have to worry about.

The Simplified Chinese options also include «recognize italic handwriting» option. «Italic»? That may or may not be intended for Chinese, unless it somehow also helps with cursive/grass characters. There is separate setting for «personalization» that may be more useful: see «To train handwriting recognition» below.

To start using the handwriting feature, you’ll need to find the touch keyboard.

It lives in a little button on the taskbar until you need it:

If you do not see that button in your taskbar:

• right-click on the taskbar (or on a touch screen, long-press and release),

• in the menu that pops up,
select «Show touch keyboard button».

After you click (or touch) that button on taskbar, the touch keyboard will appear. To switch to handwriting mode, first click the selector button at the lower right of the keyboard, and then select the handwriting icon from the four icons that appear above:

This is the touch keyboard in handwriting mode at full-screen width,

and this is the same touch keyboard after I clicked the control circled in red to minimize the size.

When in this mode, the touch keyboard can also be dragged anywhere on the screen.

On my basic Chinese input setup pages you’ll find more about customizing the Touch Keyboard for handwriting and phonetic input.

To train handwriting recognition to better recognize your own style, go to the classic Language control panel. From where we are in the above screen shots, go back one page to Settings and then click the bottom link that says «Additional date, time, & regional settings.» Or, you can enter «Language» in taskbar search and select the control panel offered at the top of those search results.

On the classic Language control panel, proceed to the options for a Chinese region.

On in the Language options panel, click on «Personalize handwriting recognition».

Handwriting > Personalize «>

It will then walk you through the entry and sampling of some characters to help it learn your handwriting personality.

On my basic Chinese input setup pages you’ll find more about customizing the Touch Keyboard for handwriting and phonetic input.

OK? That’s all I’ve got on the handwriting feature. I don’t use it much, and from the examples above you can probably tell why. There’s a reason they call me «Pinyin Joe». 🙂 But feel free to send questions, comments, or suggestions anytime.

Speech

After you start downloading the speech features, you’ll notice there are two kinds: speech recognition, and text-to-speech.

The options for this are in the Speech section of Time & Language settings. At the top, you’ll find the language menu, and an option to recognize non-native accents. Given the wide range of accents among even native Chinese speakers, I recommend everyone check that box.

(In my global US English system, I’ve been unable to get Traditional Chinese to show up in that menu no matter what else I try. As I don’t use this feature, I may not explore further and may not notice if this suddenly begins working after an update. Please let me know if you have a solution.)

At the bottom of the same settings panel, you’ll find a button for getting started with speech recognition, and a link to more settings in the classic control panel. I have not done any of this.

For text-to-speech, I was able to get the both Cantonese and Mandarin voices for Traditional Chinese by going to the «Region & language» section, removing Hong Kong, adding and removing Taiwan, then adding Hong Kong again. You see the results here: three female and three male voices.

I seldom use this feature, but I did give it a try, only to discover that I have no idea how to put these new voices to work. As of the Windows 10 launch, Windows Narrator and Office Speak retained their own lists of voices, and those lists were seemingly unrelated to the menu shown here. I’ll have to explore this further when I have more time, but for all I know this may be fixed in a future update. Please let me know if you understand how this is supposed to work.

Language packs

Language packs change the Start menu and other parts of the system into another language. That’s all they do. They are not necessary for reading and writing Chinese, and they will not fix apps with garbled text or other communication problems.

After a language pack is downloaded the first time, it will be regularly updated via the Microsoft Store rather than through Windows Update. Microsoft began using the Store for this purpose a year or two after Windows 10 was launched.

You can switch display language anytime by going back to the Languages section of Time & Language settings, selecting a language to reveal the three buttons, and then selecting «Set as default».

Then that language will move to the top of the column, and you’ll see the message «Will be display language after next sign-in»:

You don’t need to restart, just sign out and sign back in again (or as we used to say, log out and log in). But «Sign out» is not on the power button. That would be too easy. Windows 10 hides this in two or three places, and I will show you one here.

Right-click on the Start button (or on a touch screen, long-press and then release), and you’ll find it here:

When you sign back in, your system will be in the new language. This is a comparison of the Files/Settings/Power/Apps section of the Start menu in English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese:

OK? Good luck finding your way home again, Dorothy. 🙂 Just kidding. In the new Windows 10 settings panels, everything is in exactly the same place in all languages. So, just follow my instructions above. When you get back to that last right-click on the Start menu, look in the same place for «Sign out»: “注销(I)” in Simplified or “登出(I)” in Traditional Chinese.

See also:
Zhuyin input, symbols, & Zhuyin/Pinyin «ruby text» (Win7, but universal. Includes discussion of the MS Word Phonetic Guide and ruby fonts.)