Want to type in Arabic but only have an English keyboard? Press the Latin key that sounds like each letter - the corner of every key shows which - and your typing turns into Arabic on the fly. Then copy your text anywhere.
How to Type in Arabic on an English Keyboard
This tool lets you write Arabic on an ordinary English keyboard, with nothing to install. It works by sound: press the Latin letter closest to the Arabic one and it is transliterated to Arabic as you type - and every on-screen key shows, in its corner, exactly which Latin key produces that letter. Prefer to point and click? Each letter is also a button on the board, and it drops straight into the text at the cursor. When you are done, hit Copy All and paste the text wherever you need it.
How the keys map. You type on your normal keyboard and each Latin key turns into the Arabic letter that sounds like it - and the corner of every on-screen key shows which to press. The plain consonants just work: b→ب, t→ت, j→ج, d→د, r→ر, s→س, k→ك, l→ل, m→م, n→ن, h→ه, w→و, y→ي. Sounds English writes with two letters are typed that way too: th→ث, kh→خ, dh→ذ, sh→ش and gh→غ. To type a base letter followed by ه instead of the digraph - as in بيته ("his house") - press h a second time, so t,h,h→ته. The emphatic letters are the capitals, so hold Shift: H→ح, S→ص, D→ض, T→ط and Z→ظ, while the apostrophe ' gives the ayn ع. The short vowels (harakat) and the hamza forms sit on the bottom rows - click one right after a letter and it attaches to it. Used to texting in Arabizi (Franco-Arabe)? Tap the 3→ع key to switch the number row to letters - 3→ع, 7→ح, 2→ء, 5→خ, 6→ط, 8→غ, 9→ق - and tap it again for the digits.
A note on the Arabic script. Arabic is an abjad: the letters write the consonants and the long vowels ا, و and ي, while the short vowels are optional marks (the harakat) above or below - most everyday text leaves them out. It runs right to left, and the letters change shape depending on where they fall in a word; your browser does that joining for you, so the standalone forms on the keys flow into connected writing in the box. This is a phonetic helper - you press the Latin key that sounds like each letter, the academic scheme used by tools like Lexilogos - not the positional Arabic keyboard. To use the real national layout instead, open our Arabic keyboard. In Arabic, a tool like this is a لوحة مفاتيح عربية صوتية (a phonetic Arabic keyboard).
Click Shift on the left of the bar to lock the letters to upper case, and click it again to go back; holding your physical Shift while you click works too. Four more keys sit in our usual on-screen-keyboard style, each with its icon and label: Undo and Redo step back and forth through your edits, Clear empties the box, and Copy All puts the whole text on your clipboard. Your draft is kept in this browser, so it is still there when you come back, and nothing you type is ever sent anywhere - there is no sign-up and nothing to install.
Everything runs in your browser - nothing you type is sent anywhere, there is no sign-up, and it works the same on a phone or tablet. This is a phonetic helper for quick typing; to use the real national layout instead, open our Arabic keyboard, or practise your speed with the Arabic typing test.
Want this keyboard on your own website? You can embed it with a single line of HTML.
Frequently Asked Questions
You type on your ordinary keyboard and each Latin key is replaced, as you type, by the letter that sounds like it - so typing privet gives привет. It is a phonetic scheme, so there is no new key map to learn: every on-screen key shows its Latin key in the corner, and you can also click the letters on the board. When the text is ready, press Copy All and paste it wherever you need it.
You do not need a Arabic keyboard at all. Press the Latin key that sounds like each Arabic letter and it is transliterated as you type - every on-screen key shows, in its corner, which Latin key to press. Prefer the mouse? Click any letter on the board and it drops in at the cursor. When the text is ready, press Copy All and paste it wherever you need - your usual keyboard layout never changes.
The emphatic consonants are the capitals: hold Shift for S→ص, D→ض, T→ط, Z→ظ and H→ح. The letters English spells with an h are typed the same way - th→ث, kh→خ, dh→ذ and sh→ش - and the ayn ع is the apostrophe '. You can also click any of these on the board, where the corner of each key shows its Latin key.
The harakat are on the lower rows of the board: click fatha َ, damma ُ, kasra ِ, sukun ْ or shadda ّ right after a letter and the mark attaches to it; the three tanwin endings and the hamza forms (ء أ إ آ ؤ ئ) are there too. Most Arabic is written without these marks, so add them only where you need them.
Hold Shift while you type, exactly as you would in English - Shift+a gives the capital. On the board you can instead click Shift on the left to lock the letters to upper case, then click a letter, and click Shift again to go back.
Undo and Redo step backwards and forwards through your edits, Clear empties the text box, and Copy All copies everything in the box to your clipboard so you can paste it elsewhere. Each is a plain button with an icon and a label, so no keyboard shortcut is needed.
Yes to both. The board works with a tap, handy on a phone or tablet where switching the system keyboard is fiddly. And everything runs in your browser: what you type is never sent to a server, there are no accounts and nothing to install. Your current text is saved only in this browser, and Clear removes it.
This page transliterates by sound into another script; the tool offers Russian (Cyrillic), Greek and Arabic. The buttons under the box also switch to the accent-typing pages for Spanish, French, German and a dozen more Latin-script languages. For a full national keyboard to type whole words, every language has one on our online keyboard, with a typing test to practise.