How to type Arabic with harakat, without an Arabic keyboard
You are on a work or library computer with no Arabic keyboard layout and no permission to add one. Or you know the Arabic letters but not where they sit on the keys. Or you need a name spelled with its shadda and vowels on a certificate, or a few vowelled words for a class worksheet. This page covers those cases: click a letter or a mark and it goes in at the cursor.
It has a row of Arabic letters, a row of vowel marks (harakat), and a writing area that also accepts your own keyboard. Your text stays in your browser and is never saved automatically.
How to use it
- Click inside the Writing area where you want to type. You can also type there with your own keyboard and mix both methods.
- Click letters in the letter row. The لا key inserts lam and alef together; Space and New line add a space or a line break.
- To add a vowel mark, put the cursor right after the letter and click Fatha, Damma, Kasra, Sukun, one of the tanween keys or Dagger alef. For a doubled letter, click Shadda and then the vowel.
- To replace a word, select it first and click the new letter; it takes the place of the selection.
- Backspace removes the previous letter together with its marks. Undo steps back through up to 50 earlier states, and Clear empties the area (you can undo that too).
- Press Copy or Download .txt before you leave, because reloading the page clears what you wrote.
Worked examples from the tool
بَ
U+0628 U+064E
Settings: Click ب, then Fatha
لا
U+0644 U+0627
Settings: Click the لا key
مُدَرِّسَة
U+0645 U+064F U+062F U+064E U+0631 U+0651 U+0650 U+0633 U+064E U+0629
Settings: م, Damma, د, Fatha, ر, Shadda, Kasra, س, Fatha, ة
How vowel marks are stored
On a computer, each vowel mark is its own character that follows the letter; the font draws it above or below. That is why some counters see بَ as two characters, and why diacritic-removal tools can strip the marks and leave the letters untouched.
Order matters in one case: shadda combined with another vowel. If you click Shadda and then Kasra, they are stored in that order. Unicode's standard order puts fatha, damma and kasra before the shadda, and some software reorders them automatically. Both look the same on screen, but a strict character-by-character comparison may treat them as different words. If you will compare or search these texts, normalize them to NFC first in the Normalization tool.
Common slips
- Mark before the letter. Clicking a mark at the start of a word or after a space leaves it with nothing to sit on; it may appear on a dotted circle or over the space. Place the cursor after the letter, then click.
- Two vowels on one letter. The tool will not stop you clicking fatha and then kasra on the same letter. If a letter looks odd, delete it and type it again.
- ى versus ي, ة versus ه. Each has its own key. Pick the right one: search and spell-checkers treat them as different letters.
- Tanween fath with alef. Some writers put it on the letter before the alef (أهلًا), others on the alef itself (أهلاً). The tool puts the mark wherever your cursor is, so choose one style and keep it.
If you later need a copy without harakat, see the guide to removing Arabic diacritics. If you typed something with your device on the wrong layout, see the guide to typing with the wrong keyboard layout.
Limits
- It does not add harakat automatically, predict words, or check spelling or grammar. Every mark is one you place.
- The letter row has the basic Arabic letters, the hamza forms and لا; the mark row adds the Arabic comma ، and question mark ؟. There are no keys for digits, tatweel or Persian letters such as پ چ گ.
- Backspace deletes a letter and all its marks at once. To change a single mark, delete the letter and retype it, or press Undo straight after the error.
- How letters look and join on screen depends on your device's fonts and browser.
- Nothing is saved automatically, and the area holds about 100,000 characters.
Frequently asked questions
Can I type with my own keyboard in the same area?
Yes. The Writing area is an ordinary text box. Type letters on your keyboard and add marks with the buttons, or the other way round.
Why does a vowel mark appear on a dotted circle?
It has no letter in front of it to attach to. Delete it, put the cursor straight after the letter and click the mark again.
Can it add full harakat to an existing text?
No. Automatic vowelling needs linguistic analysis of the whole sentence, which this tool does not do. It inserts only the marks you choose.
How do I remove the harakat from what I typed?
Paste it into the Cleaner and tick Remove common Arabic diacritics. The vowels, tanween, shadda, sukun and dagger alef go; the letters stay.
Why does a counter say my vowelled word is longer?
When counting Unicode code points, every mark is a character. In the Counter, choose Graphemes / complete emoji to count a letter with its marks as one.
Will my text still be here if I close the page?
No. The site does not save or upload what you type. Copy it or download a .txt file before you close or reload.