How to type the German ß (eszett) on iPhone
Where ß hides on the standard English keyboard, the dedicated key it gets on the German layout, why the letter almost never needs a capital form, and what to do on the rare occasion it does.
ß — called the eszett, or scharfes S (sharp S) — is a letter German has and English does not, which is exactly why it is nowhere to be found on the iPhone’s default keyboard the first time you go looking for it. It shows up constantly in ordinary German: Straße, Fuß, groß, außen. There is nothing wrong with your keyboard. The letter is one gesture away rather than a key of its own, unless you switch layouts.
Where it hides on the English keyboard
Every accented or special letter on the standard iPhone keyboard sits behind a plain one, reached by pressing and holding rather than tapping. ß sits behind s. Hold the s key for a short beat and a small row pops up above it with a few variants, ß among them; slide your finger along the row and lift over the one you want. It is the same gesture that reaches é from e or ñ from n, just with a German consonant instead of a Western European vowel accent.
A dedicated key on the German layout
Holding a key and sliding costs a second or two, fine for an occasional word but tedious across a whole message written in German. Add the German keyboard — Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard → German — and the standard German QWERTZ layout puts ß on its own key, in the top row where a hyphen sits on the English one. No holding, no sliding, and autocorrect switches to a German dictionary at the same time, rather than continuing to check every word against an English word list.
The letter that almost never needs a capital
German capitalises every noun, far more often than English capitalises anything mid-sentence, which makes it easy to assume ß runs into the usual capital-letter questions sooner or later. It does not, because of where the letter sits inside a word rather than what a sentence does around it: ß never begins a German word. It grew out of a ligature written in the middle or at the end of a syllable, never at the front of one, and that has not changed since. A word-initial capital letter — the kind German needs constantly, on every noun — is simply never a capital ß, because no German word starts with the letter at all. Ordinary typing, however heavy on capitals German gets, never actually asks the question.
All-caps text is where it actually comes up
The exception is a whole word or line written entirely in capitals — a shop sign, a form field, a title in a design. For most of the letter’s history there was no capital ß to reach for in the first place: the standing convention, still the safer default today, is to spell it as a double S instead — STRASSE rather than a capitalised Straße. A capital form, ẞ, was formally accepted into German spelling rules in 2017, but it remains the less common choice, and font and app support for it is inconsistent enough that SS is still what most style guides recommend when a whole word goes uppercase.
Reaching ẞ on iPhone anyway
The press-and-hold row on the English keyboard that surfaces ß only ever offers the lowercase letter — the gesture was built around the accents and special letters people actually reach for in running text, and a capital sharp S was not part of that set. There is no equivalent hold on the German layout’s dedicated ß key either. The practical route, if a particular design or form genuinely calls for the capital, is Text Replacement: copy ẞ once from anywhere it already appears — a document, a message, a reference page — paste it into a new phrase under Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement, and give it a short shortcut. From then on, typing that shortcut in any app expands to the capital letter, the same way a saved email address or a canned reply does; Text Replacement does not care what the phrase contains, only that it is fixed text.
Swiss German skips this entirely
Swiss Standard German dropped ß altogether and writes ss in every position where Germany, Austria and the rest of the German-speaking world would use ß — Strasse rather than Straße, regardless of capitalisation. iOS reflects the split: German (Switzerland) sits in the keyboard list as a separate option from German, and its layout has no ß key at all, because Swiss German orthography never needs one. Someone typing Swiss German never runs into any of the above, not because iOS solved a problem for them, but because the letter simply is not part of how they write.
Where Kibo fits
German is one of the 30 typing languages built into Kibo, in the same single keyboard as the other 29 rather than a separate iOS keyboard to add and switch between. Turning it on and reaching it with a tap or hold on the globe key 🌐 puts ß on its own key exactly as the standard German layout does, with German-aware autocorrect in place of an English dictionary’s guesses. Typing in German, like any of Kibo’s languages, needs no Full Access — that switch is read only by the Copy word, Copy line and Paste buttons on the toolbar. Kibo is free to download.
Frequently asked questions
Why is there no ß key on my iPhone?
The standard keyboard is English, and English has no letter to spare for it. Press and hold the s key to reach ß through the same press-and-hold menu that reaches é or ñ, or add the German keyboard in Settings for a dedicated key instead of a hold.
How do I type a capital ẞ on iPhone?
Neither the English keyboard’s hold menu nor the German layout’s dedicated key reaches the capital form directly. Copy ẞ once from somewhere it already appears and save it as a Text Replacement phrase in Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement — after that, a short shortcut types it anywhere. Most style guides still prefer spelling the word with SS instead when it needs to go fully uppercase.
Does Swiss German use ß on iPhone?
No. Swiss Standard German writes ss in every case where German elsewhere uses ß, and iOS lists German (Switzerland) as its own keyboard with no ß key, matching that spelling convention exactly.
Try it on your own keyboard
Kibo is a free custom keyboard for iPhone with real mechanical key sounds, a wardrobe of themes and RGB backlight effects. No account, no ads, and it works with Full Access left off.