The AZERTY layout that ships with Windows hasn't changed since 1984 — and it's deeply broken.

On Windows AZERTY, you cannot directly type the capital accented letters (É È Ç À) that French orthography requires. Characters the French language actually uses — the ligatures œ and æ, the quotation marks « », the dashes — and – — are simply missing. Typing a period needs the Shift key, the @ sign hides behind AltGr+0, and braces or brackets require finger gymnastics. Typing in Spanish, German, Italian or almost any other language is worse still.

The workarounds have become part of French digital culture: generations of users have memorized Alt codes by heart (Alt+144 for É), and « é majuscule » remains an evergreen Google search in France. Millions of French speakers fight their keyboard dozens of times a day without even noticing anymore.

AZERTY Global is the corrected AZERTY: same letters, better punctuation, direct accented capitals, accessible programming symbols — while preserving 99% of existing typing habits. Less than 1% of keystrokes differ, so switching takes hours, not weeks.

• 🌍 Website & interactive tester: azerty.global
• 🪟 Windows: classic installer + Microsoft Store app
• 🍎 macOS (10.12+) · 🐧 Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch)
• 🌐 Covers 200+ languages, French typography (« » —), math and currency symbols

AZERTY Global is maintained by the AMCF (Association pour la Modernisation du Clavier Français — Association for the Modernization of the French Keyboard), a French registered nonprofit. Everything is free and released under the EUPL 1.2 open-source license. Nothing is sold: the mission is public-interest modernization of the French keyboard.

• Hardening the Windows app and cross-platform packages
• Expanding QWERTY layouts for French speakers on QWERTY hardware
• OKLM (Open Keyboard Layout Model) — an open format to describe, validate, and export keyboard layouts across platforms (draft, oklm.org)

Started in 2017. Final version released June 15, 2026.