Want to type in Greek 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 Greek on the fly. Then copy your text anywhere.
How to Type in Greek on an English Keyboard
This tool lets you write Greek on an ordinary English keyboard, with nothing to install. It works by sound: press the Latin letter closest to the Greek one and it is transliterated to Greek 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. Each Latin key becomes the Greek letter that sounds like it (the classic Beta Code scheme), and every on-screen key shows its Latin key in the corner. Most are intuitive: a→α, b→β, g→γ, d→δ, e→ε, k→κ, l→λ, m→μ, n→ν, p→π, r→ρ, s→σ, t→τ, f→φ, z→ζ. The letters with no English twin take a set key: q→θ, c→ξ, x→χ, y→ψ, w→ω, h→η, u→υ, and the word-final sigma on j→ς. For an accent, type the vowel and then press 1 for the tonos (ά έ ή ...) or 2 for the dialytika (ϊ ϋ). Hold Shift for capitals.
A note on Greek by sound. The mapping here is Beta Code, devised so scholars could type Greek on a plain Latin keyboard - which is why a few letters land on keys picked by shape or convention rather than sound, such as c→ξ, q→θ, y→ψ and w→ω. Greek also writes its lower-case s two ways - σ inside a word and a final ς at its end - and here you choose them yourself (σ on s, final ς on j). Modern Greek needs only one accent, the tonos, which you add by pressing 1 after the vowel. For the standard national keyboard instead, see our Greek 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 Greek keyboard, or practise your speed with the Greek 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 Greek keyboard at all. Press the Latin key that sounds like each Greek 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.
Type the vowel first, then press 1 to add the tonos - so a then 1 gives ά, and h then 1 gives ή. For the dialytika (two dots) on ι or υ, press 2 instead, giving ϊ or ϋ. On the board the ΄ and ¨ buttons do the same to the letter before the cursor.
Greek uses σ inside a word and a final ς at the end of one. Here you choose: s gives σ and j gives the final ς. This Beta Code mapping also puts the trickier letters on set keys - q→θ, c→ξ, y→ψ, w→ω - all shown in the corner of each key.
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.