Russian Keyboard Tester (ЙЦУКЕН)

The Russian layout on the picture

The picture shows the standard Windows Russian layout, ЙЦУКЕН, named after the first letters of its top row. It puts all 33 letters of the alphabet on the letter keys and the four extra keys next to them: Х and Ъ where US boards have [ and ], Ж and Э on ; and ’, Б and Ю on , and . . Ё takes the key left of 1. Russian keyboards usually print the Latin letters too, in another colour, because the same keys type English when you switch.

The digits stay in place, but their Shift characters change: “ on 2, № on 3, ; on 4, : on 6 and ? on 7. The full stop and comma share the key right of Ю, and / and \ sit on the key above Enter. The table under this text lists every key that differs from a US keyboard.

Switching to Russian

• Windows: Settings, Time & language, Language & region, Add a language, Russian. Switch with Win+Space or left Alt+Shift.
• macOS: System Settings, Keyboard, Text Input, Edit, then +, Russian. Pick “Russian – PC” to match this picture; the plain “Russian” Mac layout moves the punctuation.
• Linux (GNOME): Settings, Keyboard, Input Sources, +, Russian.

Testing a bilingual keyboard

Press every key once in either language: the tester goes by the key’s position, so a key works or doesn’t regardless of the layout that’s switched on. If a Cyrillic letter types the wrong character, the key itself is fine and the layout setting is wrong, usually “Russian (Typewriter)” instead of Russian. A key that stays grey in both languages is a hardware problem; one that lights up twice from a single press shows up in the chatter detector.

The Russian keys at a glance

These keys differ from a US keyboard. The browser code is the name the key sends in the event log, taken from the US key in the same place. AltGr is the right Alt key; on Windows, Ctrl+Alt does the same.