I frequently write in multiple languages and switching keyboards is cumbersome, especially when the written languages differ only by a few characters. With regard to German, I’d like a US Windows keyboard layout with German umlauts that are a bit easier accessible than the 3-stroke combination of the US international layout (which has combinations like shift + ‘ + a = ä).
The Microsoft Keyboard Layout Editor [MKL] allows creating custom keyboard layouts, so I used it to modify the US international keyboard to add the following shortcuts:
alt gr + a = ä
alt gr + o = ö
alt gr + u = ü
alt gr + shift + a = Ä
alt gr + shift + o = Ö
alt gr + shift + u = Ü
alt gr + s = ß
alt gr + 4 = §
alt gr + e = €
Head to the github repo [USG], download the entire repo (code -> download ZIP), extract the ZIP archive and run setup.exe
References
[MLK] Microsoft Keyboard Layout Editor
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=102134
[USG] Windows US-DE keyboard
https://github.com/ggeorgovassilis/windows-us-de-keyboard
George's Techblog 