I have to add some details i remembered (Remember, only when chatting in overlay game mode, outside works well):

• If i copy these characters from the other person i am chatting, i can paste and send to him without problems. But i can't write them directly
• All keys in my keyboard worked in their position in steam overlay, including ñ Ñ ~ (ñ key in spanish keyboard, mayus and alt. gr. symbols of the same key) and all the other keys, including alt gr options of the keys of ^ " '`. Only the characters what don't appear directly (They go with another or they write alone if i push the key twice) don't do anything.
• the keys of the numerical keypad do both options when Bloq Num is ON, when it's OFF works like a cursor. When is ON, only the keys with functions in both modes do both functions at the same time (First numerical function, second the movement, for example, if i write "4", first appears the 4 and later go one character to the left, and the cursor is in the left of the "4"). Keys in the numerical keypad with only one function for both modes works normal.

After all these months, I'm still having this issue.
Steam Beta Client Build Oct 14 2013

I'd like to inform that this (or very similar) bug affects me as well. I'm not sure if I should report a new issue since in my case, I cannot use diacritics in any steam window whether it's an in-game overlay or the main window. Also, my keyboard layout is Finnish.

Like the submitter, my steam uses otherwise correct, non-English keyboard layout and I can copy-paste those characters into steam fine.

Broken keys:
ö ä å §

Broken keys with a modifier:
Ö Ä Å (obviously)
½ (shift + §)
£ (alt gr + 3)
€ (alt gr + e)

Broken dead keys (by themselves and with other characters):
¨ ~ ´ ` ^

Strangely ¨ (diaresis) key, when pressed twice (instead of with another key), will produce " (double quote). Other broken keys don't output anything.

I tried using LANG=fi_FI to see if this bug was caused by LANG=en_US, but that didn't help.

Still happening as 28/11/2014. Dead keys don't work in overlay mode.

Hey, this summer it stopped to accept typographical symbols input from
keyboard (such as long dash, copyright, «“quotes”»…); eats them well
when paste from clipboard. Can this be related?

On Kubuntu 14.04, I had this problem temporarily. I was able to fix it by starting ibusd (technically restarting, since it had crashed before-hand). Best guess is that Steam uses IBus for keyboard input, but I'm not entirely sure. Hopefully this works for at least a few other people, but it may not.

This is still an issue. For me it's äöüß that aren't working.

Steam/Troubleshooting - ArchWiki #SetLocale('en_US.UTF-8') fails at game startup
Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen and then run locale-gen as root.
Didn't have this error on startup DotA but this fix my problem.

Still an issue for me, running Debian Stretch with MATE Desktop Environment 1.18.0

as you can see, accented characters work everywhere BUT in steam chat, both overlay and in desktop.
Accented characters work in Dota, and I can even whisper them and then I see them in my chat, but I cannot input them directly into chat.

EDIT: the above is valid both to new beta and regular steam client.

Still a bug, latest stable client. 1528497815.

Honestly, this is quite a shameful issue, considering this is basic user interface programming and it DOES work outside of the overlay
Maybe it would help if it was clear what the problem is?

Ok, I must say that this is currently fixed for me in the new no-beta version. It wasn't fixed last week.

Debian 9, steam package version: 1532458786

@alete89 That's overlay? Because the issue is using accented letters on in-game overlay chat.

@alete89 what about Steam Overlay? Fixed too?

@alete89 what about Steam Overlay? Fixed too?

Fixed too, for me.

I cannot type the keys ä, ö, ü and a few more within any window in steam. Irrelevant if overlay, shop search or chat

Build: 1533163808

Locale

LANG=de_CH.utf8
LC_CTYPE="de_CH.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC="de_CH.utf8"
LC_TIME="de_CH.utf8"
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_MONETARY="de_CH.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES="de_CH.utf8"
LC_PAPER="de_CH.utf8"
LC_NAME="de_CH.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="de_CH.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="de_CH.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="de_CH.utf8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_CH.utf8"

When I start steam from the command line I see this appear each time I type one of those keys:

[0804/162435.250803:WARNING:keyboard_code_conversion_x.cc(1357)] Unknown keycode:0

I can type these characters just fine everywhere else.

Same issue with Turkish characters; ö ç ş ı İ ğ

I'm experiencing the same problem! I'm using debian 9 stretch, mostly stable branch and I can't type any of this characters: á é í ó ú ñ ¿. I need them because my native language is Spanish. I can copy and paste them from other programs, and if other people use them they get displayed. I changed the keyboard layout and the problem is the same. The overlay ignore this keys like if it had some filter.

pablo@laloca:~$ uname -a
Linux laloca 4.9.0-8-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.130-2 (2018-10-27) x86_64 GNU/Linux
pablo@laloca:~$ cat /etc/debian_version 
9.7
pablo@laloca:~$

@Plagman Any plans on fixing this? It's extremely frustrating to write to my Swedish friends in-game.

my godness 6 years and still nothing ????

This is still an issue. Using build from 29th of April 2019 on Manjaro Linux 18 on kernel 4.19 with Budgie DE. Whenever i try typing åäö-characters in the chat in steam overlay nothing appears. Outside of overlay I can write the characters in the chat.
Playing Payday 2 reveals this issue.

Same here, no num key work (from the key pad on the right side of keyboard, actually 5 works..), and accentuated characters do not work (french keyboard layout), é è ç à ^ ù
Keyboard layout seems to be good (the characters correspond to the layout) but still, accentuated characters and right hand side num keys (but 5) won't print in steam overlay.

I got the same problem in the Steam overlay (Linux client) and certain ingame chat functions (e. g. Worms WMD via Proton 4.11, but native Linux games, too), especially with vowels (ä, ü, ö).

In the non overlay text boxes (chat, search function, forums and others) the whole German keyboard layout works as expected, including special characters. By the way: To make this work you have to add "en_US.UTF-8" as a secondary global environment language. But you can keep your language of choice as default.

Please let me know if I could help with further details or doing some tests.

Some of my current system infos:

OS: Manjaro Cinnamon with Kernel 5.2.4
Steam: API V019, 1563346602
Proton: V4.11
GeForce driver: V430.26

I've been experimenting this also for months after installing the Manjaro Cinnamon spin with french locale, french keyboard, and Steam configured on French too. No accents at all in steam chat, both on desktop and ingame. My Setup :

• Lenovo T460 (Intel i5-6200u, HD Graphics 520 - i915 driver)
• Cinammon 3.x then 4.0 and now 4.2
• Steam via the steam-manjaro package (derived from the arch's Steam package)
• locale :

$ sudo locale-gen
Generating locales...
  fr_FR.UTF-8... done
Generation complete.

Manually un-commenting "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" and regenerating locales did the work :

$ grep -v "#" /etc/locale.gen
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8  
fr_FR.UTF-8 UTF-8
$ sudo locale-gen
Generating locales...
  en_US.UTF-8... done
  fr_FR.UTF-8... done

Don't know why the steam client is not getting all the characters in the current locale (it's UTF-8, isn't this meant to be universal ?)

I guess UTF8 is the character encoding and you have multiple sets of characters, like FR or EN.

Thanks seboss666. German and English UTF-8 were already uncommented in my locale.gen, but sudo locale-gen did the trick here. I can now use special characters in the Steam overlay, too – doesn't matter if it's a native Linux game or via Proton. It still doesn't work in ingame text fields of (for example) Worms WMD, though.

Try this patch: https://salsa.debian.org/glibc-team/glibc/blob/sid/debian/patches/localedata/locale-C.diff

It's possible to use russian letters in Proton games

Ok, i can use UTF-8 letters in overlay! To fix this, set game launch options to this: LANG=en_US.UTF8 LC_ALL=en_US.UTF8 %command%

Warning!

This may break your game. Steam intentionally sets locale to C or C.UTF8, because some games use some functions wrongly and it may lead to wrong results.

I think, it should work fine for debian and debian bases distros without this workaround, because theyt ship glibc with C.UTF8 patch.

I have this issue too, but only with some games, like "Slay The Spire".
It looks like workaround proposed by @XakepSDK works and I can type Cyrillic symbols in Chats inside Overlay, if the game is launched with suggested options.

My Setup:
GNU\Linux Debian 10 'buster' (kernel 4.19 x86_64)
Xfce 4.12 (lightdm + xfwm4)
Locales:
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
ru_RU.UTF-8 UTF-8

Hello from 2020!
I am using Linux Mint 19.3 with Cinnamon 4.4.8. Still having this issue with most games (e. g. Portal 2, The Talos Principle, ...), but it's ok in Half-Life 2.

Btw, if it's important, I have installed my system in English, but am using steam in Russian.

Have tried what @XakepSDK suggested with both en_US and ru_RU locales (and both Russian and English languages in Steam - 4 attempts in total), none of this worked for Portal 2 :(

nikolay@Linux-coder:~$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_NAME=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_ALL=
nikolay@Linux-coder:~$ locale -a
C
C.UTF-8
en_AG
en_AG.utf8
en_AU.utf8
en_BW.utf8
en_CA.utf8
en_DK.utf8
en_GB.utf8
en_HK.utf8
en_IE.utf8
en_IL
en_IL.utf8
en_IN
en_IN.utf8
en_NG
en_NG.utf8
en_NZ.utf8
en_PH.utf8
en_SG.utf8
en_US.utf8
en_ZA.utf8
en_ZM
en_ZM.utf8
en_ZW.utf8
POSIX
ru_RU.utf8
ru_UA.utf8
nikolay@Linux-coder:~$ 

Wauw, it's sort of impressive that this is not yet fixed :O
For me it's æøå (danish letters), my Pop!_OS is installed as English with Danish keyboard

Still the same with every non english characters on my side.

Link to my system info https://gist.github.com/Zorrototo/3518d9e58b1396acf450e7a12eb923b8

The num pad on my keyboard also doesn't work in the Steam overlay, as well as every accentuated characters. Nothing changed since my reply above https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/2122#issuecomment-510822609

I just had this problem on Arch Linux, using the US intl-altgr keyboard for danish characters.
It seems like steam requires the en_US.UTF-8 locale generated and (maybe) set as LANG environment variable.

My fix:

// Uncomment the en_US.UTF-8 line
# nano /etc/locale.gen
# locale-gen
# echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf

Now I can type UTF-8 characters on multiple keyboard layouts.

@Zabell Thanks.
I had been banging my head trying to get danish keys working in steam. uncommenting en_US.UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen and running locale-gen made it work.

Unfortunately none of the possible solutions worked for me.

I'm trying to use German and Portuguese accents/diacritics.

➜  ~ locale
LANG=de_AT.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="de_AT.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=de_AT.UTF-8
LC_TIME=de_AT.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="de_AT.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=de_AT.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="de_AT.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=de_AT.UTF-8
LC_NAME=de_AT.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=de_AT.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=de_AT.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=de_AT.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=de_AT.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

Still an issue for me, although only on native games. Proton games works fine with special characters äöå.

Come on guys, can you fix this? It will soon be a 10 YEARS OLD bug.... @kisak-valve please can you bump to the appropriate people this 10 years old issue that impacts everyone not writing with english characters?

The beta update from the 21'st of February 2023 seems to cause a similar issue for the regular chat window.
The Steam Store and Friends/Chat are no longer grouped together either

At the time of writing, the stable branch (update from the 14'th) remains unaffected.
I say similar, because certain letters (like æ,ø,å) still works, but key combinations involving dead keys do not. For instance, it's impossible right now for me to write the letter ñ or the symbol ^ without copy-pasting them.
Locale:

LANG=en_DK.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
LC_CTYPE="en_DK.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_DK.utf8"
LC_TIME="en_DK.utf8"
LC_COLLATE="en_DK.utf8"
LC_MONETARY="en_DK.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_DK.utf8"
LC_PAPER="en_DK.utf8"
LC_NAME="en_DK.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_DK.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_DK.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_DK.utf8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_DK.utf8"
LC_ALL=en_DK.utf8

Maybe the recent update to CeF somehow broke dead key modifiers?

(Edited)
Fixed by March 14'th 2023 beta update

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/2122#issuecomment-1445026032

Shouldn't LC_ALL stay unset at all times? Or was it done especially for the utf8 workaround?

For me, the keys é/2 è/7 ç/9 à/0 (french keyboard layout : Français (variante)) does not work, not only for typing but to actually use as shortcuts in the toolbars of games or other functionnality.

I remember many months ago, I couldn't type those diacritics caracters on the Steam forums. Now it works. But not in games : for exemple in FF14, I can't type them in the chat without the launch option "LANG=en_US.UTF8 LC_ALL=en_US.UTF8". With that set, I can type them, but I still can't use spells with those, nor can I set them in the parameters, as if the physical keys werent functionning (when they are).

For Paragon : The Overprime, I can set "é" as a shortcut for things, it will appear as "É", but pressing the key in game wont do anything. But in this game I can insert the diacritics characters in the chat with no launching option set.

I also noticed this issue appeared on League of Legends as I installed it last week (Lutris, so not Steam) when everything worked fine a year or two ago.

A game that use neither Steam nor Lutris does not have this issue.

I come from Issue #9631.

Today the problem persists. Don't work accents and other special keys in Steam Overlay. Examples:
á à é è í ï ó ò ú ü ñ ç

Steam version: stable 1709846872

Note that this issue is coming with the last rework of UI at June 2023.

Best rergards

I also can't type special characters. It seems that Steam Overlay on Linux forces en-US layout (and possibly QWERTY too, but I'm not sure), regardless of system settings. Typing in-game (e.g. TF2) works fine, and typing while alt+tabbed also works fine, but in the Steam Overlay it seems to force en-US keyboard input.

I'm on Fedora Linux 40 KDE, and my keyboard layout is not en-US.

Stable Client, version 1718904662.

I still have this issue on Ubuntu 24.04 / up to date stable Steam from Valve's DEB.
Using the launch option as mentioned by @XakepSDK fixes it.

Using the launch option as mentioned by @XakepSDK fixes it.

I wouldn't call that a "solution" (or workaround). I would call workaround if it could be a Steam client parameter (as STEAM_FORCE_DESKTOPUI_SCALING=2.0). And yet, there would be games that still wouldn't work (I don't know).

In no case a "solution".

Regards

This issue is present on my Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS system as well.
I'm using the following locale in the system:

localectl status
System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
               LANGUAGE=en_US:en
               LC_NUMERIC=sv_SE.UTF-8
               LC_TIME=sv_SE.UTF-8
               LC_MONETARY=sv_SE.UTF-8
               LC_PAPER=sv_SE.UTF-8
               LC_NAME=sv_SE.UTF-8
               LC_ADDRESS=sv_SE.UTF-8
               LC_TELEPHONE=sv_SE.UTF-8
               LC_MEASUREMENT=sv_SE.UTF-8
               LC_IDENTIFICATION=sv_SE.UTF-8
    VC Keymap: (unset)                      
   X11 Layout: se
   X11 Model: pc105

Steam client language: English
Game: Tyranny

Using the workaround LANG=en_US.UTF8 LC_ALL=en_US.UTF8 %command% that @XakepSDK suggested seems to mitigate the problem and I can now write special characters in the overlay for this game at least. I haven't tried other games or non-native games yet to see if the issue persists there as well, but it is still an issue and adding hacks per-game like this isn't the solution.

12 Years later, this is still an Issue, I suppose not many developers are working in non US language environment.

Just noticed it on my setup. I can't grasp how is this still an issue after 12 years?

I'm having this same issue when using US intl. I tried all with and without dead keys options.

Having the exact same issue. I just installed Linux Mint 22.2, and while Steam works fine in general, this issue is pretty weird and never happened to me on Windows. I'm using a Danish (Windows) keyboard layout, and don't have any other layouts registered. Both my system language and Steam language is English. I can type Danish characters just fine in the chat window until I start a game. This is where it gets weird.

First of all, it happens in some games, but not others. I expect that might be related to whether the game in question uses Proton or not, but I really don't know. As examples, I have the issue when playing Brotato, but not when playing Ball X Pit.

Secondly, it only happens when I use the chat window through the overlay. If I alt+tab out of the game and use the chat window directly, I can write Danish characters just fine, even though the game is still running.

I can't tell if it is only an issue with the overlay or the layout is messed up in-game as well, because all the keys used for normal game controls are the same in the Danish layout as the US one.

I must admit, seeing that something as basic as using the system keyboard layout has been a problem for more than 12 years with no indication that a fix is forthcoming is quite surprising and not at all comforting.

I have now encountered this issue for the first time with Mint 22.3. Never had any issue before but all of a sudden it's blocking me from using special German characters (öäüß) in both the game chat and the Steam overlay, and eats keyboard inputs while gaming. As in I need to press Space bar 2-3 times for my character to actually jump, for example.
de_DE.utf8 and en_US.utf8 locales are installed.

Same here. All of a sudden I can't type spanish "keys", for instance: ñ, ¿, ¡, á,...

In order to do it, I have to press ALT+the key... Really weird.

I just came to this repository to report this issue, and I didn't expect to see that it has been reported and acknowledged since 2013.

Can you please fix this 13 year old bug so that users who speak languages other than English can communicate properly lmao

Hello guys,

JFYI. Looks like it was fixed in my system like that:
I use Fedora 44 Silverblue, installed Steam from flatpak
And one thing I did which fixed that inputs problem is I forced to use a specific version of Proton
See the screenshot below:

UPD. This is not related to the chat inputs issue