Help Desk

Information Technology

Russify Your Mac

To write and exchange documents in Russian or other Cyrillic languages on a Mac requires more than just installing a font. Because there are no universal standards for how Latin-based computers deal with Cyrillic, it is necessary for all people involved to be using the same standards in order to exchange text electronically. These instructions will help a Macintosh user to install the necessary software for working with Cyrillic Text. 

Setup Instructions for macOS

    1. Open System Preferences from the Apple menu.
    2. Click on Keyboard and select the Input Sources pane.
    3. Click on the + button in the bottom left-hand corner. add international keyboard
    4. Select the international keyboard you wish to add, and then select Add.Screen-Shot-2019-04-16-at-2.46.18-PM.png
    5. Now quit out of System Preferences. You will now be able to type in Russian by selecting the US Flag icon in the top right corner of your toolbar and switching to Russian.                                                                                              Screen-Shot-2019-04-16-at-2.48.17-PM.png
    6. You may wish to see the keyboard viewer while typing. To enable this function, click on the flag menu and select "Show Keyboard Viewer" from the drop-down menu.
    7. After completing the setup procedure above, you may wish to download additional Russian fonts. Once it has finished downloading, double click on CyrFontsPack_v1.1.dmg.bin. Wait until it is finished unpacking and double click on the new icon, CyrFontsPackv1.1.dmg. Now a disk image will appear on your desktop called Cyrillic Fonts Pack.
    8. Open Font Book, located in the Applications folder. Go to the File menu and select Add Fonts. Now in the left corner of the window, select Cyrillic Fonts Pack with a white disk drive icon. Open the single folder with the Russian name. Select the top font, hold down the shift key, and select the rest of the fonts. Release the shift key and click on Open. Now quit Font Book. When you restart your computer, you will be able to use your new Cyrillic fonts.

We recommend that you use Microsoft Office 2004 or above as it supports Unicode. For web browsing, Firefox seems to be able to read the widest variety of Russian pages.