Free (Simplified/Traditional) Chinese Pinyin Input Method (IME) from Google

Windows operating system, including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, comes with built-in input method editor (IME, also known as input method environment) that allows computer users to type and enter characters and symbols not found on their keyboard, such as allows the user of a Western keyboard to input Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indic language characters.

If you’re Windows users who use the default Microsoft Pinyin IME 3.0 or simply Microsoft Pinyin text service input method as keyboard layout for Chinese language, the input speed or typing rate must be painfully slow, and will face difficulty to ‘spell’ the word when you’re not familiar with the Hanyu Pinyin phonetic pronunciation for the alphabet. As a result, Google has released an advanced Google Pinyin phonetic input method to increase and speed up typing rate and input efficiency of Chinese language.

Features of Google Pinyin Input Method:

1. Intelligent sentence building with smart high accuracy word interpreting and choice including support for long phrases or sentences.
2. Integrate popular vocabularies and phrases from Internet and web searches for richer phrases database.
3. Able to personalize the Chinese character input method where your usage habit and personal dictionary are linked with Google Account, and can be sync and used everywhere on other computer on the Internet.
4. Input box for Chinese language is also the input box to search the web by simply clicking on a button.
5. Intelligent error correction for commonly misspelled words.
6. Support user defined short phrases for some special shorthands.
7. Able to suggest English word based on the first few letters typed to ease the process to enter English input in Chinese input environment without the need to switch input language to English or Chinese by preceding the strokes with letter v. This function will also help users who have problem spell English words.
8. Support Hanyu Pin Yin acronym and fuzzy phonetic for speakers from different areas that may pronounce a alphabet differently. When enabled, sounds in zh, sh, and ch can be represented by z, s, h.
9. Google Chinese Pinyin input method dynamically adjust the order of the Chinese words or phrases selection sequence based on the past usage frequency.
10. Support input of traditional Chinese (Big5 or GBK character set).
11. Provides GBK large font resources (extension of the GB2312 character set).
12. The most frequently used words and phrases will always been shown first to speed up typing speed.
13. Support also stroke input method for uncommon words that users may not aware of its phonetics. To enter stroke input mode, simply start it with the letter ‘u’.

Some useful tips when using Google Chinese Pinyin Input Method:

1. If you’ve already defined another Chinese input method for your Windows system, remember to switch to Google Pinyin input method.
2. To switch between Chinese and English input mode, press Shift key.
3. In Chinese input mode, press Enter key instead of Space key will enter the text typed as English instead of Chinese characters. Useful to speedily enter one or two English words while typing Chinese article.
4. Fuzzy spelling (Pinyin acronym) is not activated by default. To enable it, check out here for instructions.
5. All URLs (link locations) or email addresses will be identified automatically by Google Pinyin IME, and need not to switch input language beforehand.
6. By default, the Google Pinyin IME will use simplified Chinese. To switch to traditional Chinese character set, right click on the IME’s toolbar, and select Traditional Chinese.

Download Google Pinyin Input Method (direct download link)

The legacy version 1.2.33.79 of Google Pinyin IME is also available for download, useful for older Windows systems if your system cannot run the newer version 2 of Google Chinese IME. Direct download link to setup installer of Google Pinyin v1: https://dl.google.com/pinyin/v1/GooglePinyinInstaller.exe

Google Pinyin IME supports Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 or later and works on Internet Explorer 6.0, 6.5, 7.0 and above.