Arabic Keyboard — لوحة مفاتيح عربية
Click the Arabic keys below to write, then copy your text wherever you need it. Nothing to install, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
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Type Arabic without an Arabic keyboard
Most keyboards outside the Arab world have no Arabic letters printed on them, and on a work, school or public computer you often cannot install an Arabic layout. This keyboard puts the letters on screen instead, so you can write Arabic on any machine — you click or tap the keys, so no Arabic physical layout is needed.
If you searched for كيبورد عربي, this is the same thing: an online Arabic keyboard you type on with the mouse or by touch.
How to type Arabic online
- Click or tap the Arabic keys. Your text appears in the box above, written right to left.
- Press Shift for hamza forms such as أ إ آ, Arabic punctuation and the diacritics. It stays on until you press it again.
- Edit as you would anywhere else: the box is an ordinary text field, so you can click inside it to move the cursor, select text, type with your own keyboard, or paste.
- Press Copy Text to copy everything in the box, then paste it into your message, document or form. Clear Text empties the box.
Using it alongside your own keyboard: AZERTY, QWERTY or any other
Nothing here is mapped onto your physical keys. Arabic goes into the box when you click or tap the letters on screen, so what is printed on your own keyboard — AZERTY, QWERTY, QWERTZ or anything else — makes no difference to how this page behaves. There is no layout to choose and nothing to match.
Your own keyboard does keep working inside the box, typing whatever your operating system produces — Latin letters, on a machine with no Arabic layout installed. That is useful for the parts that are not Arabic: a number, a Latin name, an email address, a web address. Most people end up working both ways at once, clicking the Arabic letters and typing the rest by hand.
Harakat (tashkeel): the short vowel marks
Arabic is normally written without its short vowels. They are added where the reading would otherwise be ambiguous — in the Qur’an, in poetry, in children’s books, in a name you want read correctly, or in language teaching. On this keyboard they live on Shift: press it once and the keys change to the marks, so you can place a fatha, kasra, damma, sukun or shadda on the letter you have just typed.
A mark always attaches to the letter before it, so type the letter first and the mark second. Shift stays on until you press it again, which lets you add several marks in a row without reaching for it each time. Hamza forms such as أ إ آ and Arabic punctuation are on the same Shift layer.
Common questions
- Is this Arabic keyboard free?
- Yes, and there is nothing to sign up for. No account, no trial, no limit on how much you type.
- Do I need to install an Arabic keyboard or layout?
- No. The letters are on the screen, so you click or tap them. That is the point of an on-screen keyboard: it works on a machine where you cannot change the system settings, such as a work, school or library computer.
- Does it work on a phone or tablet?
- Yes. The keys are touch targets, so you tap them as you would any on-screen keyboard. Your device’s own keyboard is not needed and will not open over the page.
- How do I type the harakat (fatha, kasra, damma)?
- Press Shift. The key faces change to the diacritics, and each mark attaches to the letter you typed before it. Press Shift again to go back to the letters.
- Can I paste the text into Word, WhatsApp or a form?
- Yes. Press Copy Text and paste it wherever you need it. The text is ordinary Unicode Arabic, so it keeps its direction and shaping in any application that supports Arabic.
- Is anything I type sent anywhere?
- No. This site is static files with no server to send text to, so what you write stays in your browser. The word suggestions come from a list built into the page, not from a lookup service.
Good to know
Word suggestions are on by default: type two Arabic letters and up to five matching words appear above the keys. Tap one to complete the word you are typing. The list comes from a word list built into the page — nothing you type is sent anywhere — and the switch above it turns suggestions off at any time.
The on-screen keys insert text, but your browser’s undo (Ctrl+Z) only reverses what you typed yourself, not what the on-screen keyboard inserted. Use the on-screen Backspace to correct those.
If one of your own keyboard's keys has stopped responding, you can run the keyboard test to find out which one.