Accentra

What's new in 1.4.0

• New tray menu item: Pause accent input — temporarily disables accent mode without quitting Accentra. Click again to resume. Useful when you need normal key auto-repeat.
• Auto-repeat is now suppressed for all letter keys (A–Z) while Accentra is running, not just keys that have accent variants defined. This makes the behavior consistent across the keyboard.

Full changelog on GitHub

How it works

Accentra sits in your system tray and watches your keyboard. When you hold a key a little longer than usual, it enters accent mode — no popup, no overlay, purely keyboard-driven.

Works in Discord, Messenger, browsers, Notepad — everywhere. No administrator rights required.

Installation

Tray menu

Right-click the ā icon in the system tray for options:

• Start with Windows — toggle whether Accentra launches automatically on login (enabled by default after install).
• Edit accent maps... — opens the accent maps folder in Explorer so you can customize which accented characters are available for each key.
• About Accentra... — opens this web page.
• Exit — stop Accentra until the next login (or until you run it again).

Running as Admin

By default Accentra runs in non-privileged mode, so by Windows design it can't intercept keystrokes within apps running elevated.
To work around this limitation, open a command window as admin and run Accentra. Because Accentra is on your PATH, it will start elevated and become available in elevated apps.

Limitations

• ⚠ Touch / soft keyboard: Accentra intercepts physical keyboard input only. The Windows on-screen keyboard and touch input use a different path that bypasses the hook entirely.
• ⚠ Elevated apps: Accentra does not intercept keystrokes in apps running as Administrator. See Running as Admin for a workaround.
• ⚠ Key auto-repeat: While Accentra is running, holding a key enters accent mode instead of producing repeated characters. Auto-repeat is not available for keys that have accent variants defined.

Accent reference

These are the default accent sequences. Hold any base key to enter accent mode, then tap to cycle through its variants.

These are the defaults. Right-click the tray icon and choose Edit accent maps... to customize variants for any key.

Customizing accent maps

Accentra's accent sequences are fully configurable. To open the accent maps folder, right-click the ā tray icon and choose Edit accent maps.... Open accent-maps.json with Notepad or any text editor — each entry maps a base letter to a string of variants:

Each character in the string becomes one step in the cycle. The last character is typically the plain letter itself, which lets you cycle back to the start. You can add new base keys, remove ones you never use, or reorder variants to put your most-used accents first. Changes take effect immediately — no restart needed.

System requirements

• ✓ Windows 10 or Windows 11
• ✓ No .NET runtime to install — everything is bundled in the single EXE
• ✓ No administrator rights required
• ✓ Works with any application running at normal privilege (Discord, Messenger, browsers, Office, Notepad, …)

Privacy Policy

Accentra does not collect, store, or transmit any personal data.

• ✓ No keylogging: Keystrokes are processed locally in real time solely to detect long-press timing and inject accented characters. They are never recorded or stored.
• ✓ No network access: Accentra makes no network connections of any kind.
• ✓ No telemetry: No usage data, crash reports, or analytics are collected.
• ✓ No third-party services: Accentra has no dependencies on external services or APIs.
• ✓ Local data only: The only file written to disk is accent-maps.json, which contains your accent configuration and nothing else.