Is this for you?

Download and install the .pkg, then add ChiaKey in System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources. Apple Silicon is supported.

Install

Frequently asked questions

Careful refinements preserve the familiar feel while improving security and performance.

The input method looks at the sentence and your selection history when ordering candidates. Characters you choose often rise to the top next time.

Adaptive candidates

Hold Shift and press ← to expand the selection one character at a time, then press Enter to add it to your user dictionary. Ctrl+3 adds the three characters before the cursor directly (Ctrl+1–9 sets the length).

Add phrases

Control+Command+. opens the symbol table. When the composition area is empty, Ctrl+0 also shows punctuation candidates.

Symbol table

Control+Command+G toggles the output filter: type Bopomofo as usual and commit Simplified Chinese. Command+Shift+Space toggles full-width Latin characters.

Traditional-to-Simplified Chinese

Move the cursor to where you want a break while composing and press Tab to force segmentation—the sentence is then recomposed around that boundary.

Tab segmentation

The default is smart Bopomofo composition, while the traditional Bopomofo, Cangjie, and Simple modules from the OpenVanilla era remain available. You can also import your own .cin tables to add table-based methods such as Cantonese or Hakka.

The old friends are still here

The familiar way, made easier

— Yahoo! KeyKey, evolving for modern macOS

ChiaKey

After ending the project, Yahoo! released its code as open source. ChiaKey starts from that codebase: replacing obsolete APIs, repairing missing pieces, and continually improving the app, its performance, and its lexicon so the familiar input experience can keep evolving on modern macOS.

ChiaKey is a macOS input method for Traditional Chinese that uses Bopomofo (also known as Zhuyin), the phonetic script commonly used in Taiwan. Built from Yahoo! KeyKey’s open-source code, it carries its familiar experience forward while continually repairing, improving, and building a new lexicon and language model.

The first goal is to carry forward Yahoo! KeyKey’s composition and candidate window, while a new lexicon makes that familiar feel better suited to Taiwanese usage today.

Keep the familiar feel

Improve security and algorithms with modern APIs and compile for Apple Silicon.

Modernize carefully

ChiaKey is not trying to compete on features with modern input methods. Its focus is stability.

A conservative pace

A free, cross-platform intelligent input method.

Yahoo! KeyKey launches

Released under a BSD-style license on GitHub (YahooArchive/KeyKey). The final installer has been continuously adapted by the community ever since.

Project closes; source code opens

The final-generation installer will no longer install on macOS 26 and later.

Apple announces the end of x86 support

Repairs the app and keeps building its word-selection lexicon for Apple Silicon and modern macOS.

What is ChiaKey?

A lexicon is more than one list. ChiaKey combines multiple sources to preserve a familiar feel while continuously choosing vocabulary suited to everyday Taiwanese usage; after installation on your Mac, it adds two layers that are yours.

Yahoo! KeyKey used surrounding words to help choose characters, but that data was never released with its code. ChiaKey draws on about 470 million characters of real Taiwanese text—government news, Legislative Yuan transcripts, PTT, Plurk, and Traditional Chinese Wikipedia—to find word pairings that help distinguish homophones in context.

470 million characters for more accurate selection

Language evolves over time. ChiaKey tries to keep up by regularly watching for trending words and loading them automatically with every lexicon update. It carries forward more than the code: the lexicon keeps moving forward too.

Trending words, freshly stocked

Combines everyday characters, words, and readings so you can type daily Chinese smoothly.

Everyday word data

When words sound alike, it refers to the surrounding context to help choose the candidate that best fits the sentence.

Context-aware corrections

Automatically collects trending topics and names from the web, then updates the lexicon.

Recently trending words

Adjusts common Taiwanese writing and candidate order, while reducing words being split or combined incorrectly.

Taiwan usage adjustments

The words you add and your selection habits stay on this Mac; custom words can be imported or exported.

User dictionary + learning cache

Layered lexicons that understand you

Update lexicons without reinstalling

Cangjie

Simple

Smart Bopomofo

Traditional Bopomofo

Input modules

千秋輸入法

Based on lettering found on Taiwan Railways rolling stock, preserving visual memories of car numbers, weights, and type marks.

Taiwan Railways Typeface

A Taiwanese open-source rounded typeface, co-created at justfont and soft and springy like tapioca pearls.

jf open Huninn

Warm Nixie-display numerals for clocks and retro-futurist interfaces.

Nixie Numeral Typeface

Fonts

Tokyono Sora leaves Plurk’s core interactions intact and redraws its appearance: information hierarchy, color, spacing, and the relationship between the background and interface. It is pure CSS; paste it into Plurk’s custom theme style field to apply it.

Line height, display names, avatar placement, color, and post width are all adjusted for easier scanning.

Reworking the timeline

Translucent panels with live blur make an uploaded background genuinely part of the interface.

Blending background and UI

Supports portrait screens and browser zoom without letting the layout fall apart.

Readable in every orientation

Karma is displayed in a custom Nixie numeral typeface; custom.css can switch it to a world-line divergence style.

Nixie-tube karma

Paste the theme CSS into Plurk’s Custom Theme → Custom Theme Style. Live blur uses the GPU; machines without hardware acceleration can precompute a background with the static blur generator. Extensions for dark mode and the top bar are included too.