How to Type Kashmiri on Your Phone and Computer

You can type Kashmiri without installing anything unusual: as of October 2026, Gboard on Android and the built-in keyboards on iPhone, iPad and Mac all include Kashmiri in both Perso-Arabic and Devanagari script. Windows has no dedicated Kashmiri layout, and the standard Linux input method lacks several Kashmiri letters, so on those systems you need an extra layout or an online keyboard. Whatever you type on, use a font that actually contains the Kashmiri letters, and avoid the Urdu and Arabic look-alike characters that many keyboards and websites slip in.

Which script to use

Kashmiri (کٲشُر / कॉशुर) is written mainly in a modified Perso-Arabic script, which the Jammu and Kashmir government recognises as the official script, usually in the Nastaliq style. Devanagari is also used, and the older Sharada script survives mostly in religious use (see the writing-system section on Wikipedia and its sources). This guide covers both main scripts, but most of the detail is about Perso-Arabic, because that is where typing goes wrong most often. Our Kashmiri→English translator also expects Perso-Arabic input.

Perso-Arabic Kashmiri marks its vowels much more fully than Urdu does, so it needs characters that Urdu keyboards do not have. The ones to know, with their Unicode code points:

Vowel values follow Wikipedia's Kashmiri vowel table; character names and usage notes are from the Unicode names list. In Devanagari, Unicode has dedicated Kashmiri vowel signs ॖ and ॗ (U+0956, U+0957), independent vowels ॶ andॷ (U+0976, U+0977), and the sign ॏ (U+094F).

Android: Gboard and Indic Keyboard

Google added Kashmiri to Gboard for Android in April 2017, in both Devanagari and Arabic script, alongside a QWERTY transliteration option. Google's Gboard setup page currently lists five Kashmiri entries: Arabic, Arabic transliteration, Devanagari, Devanagari transliteration, and Latin.

1. Open any app you can type in and tap a text field.
2. Tap the features menu at the top left of the keyboard, then More settings → Languages.
3. Choose Kashmiri, select a layout and tap Done. “Kashmiri, Arabic” gives you Perso-Arabic keys; the transliteration layouts let you spell words phonetically on a QWERTY keyboard.

One known problem: a January 2024 report to the Unicode Technical Committee by Manish Goregaokar found that the Kashmiri Gboard keyboard produced the Pashto letter ۍ (U+06CD) where Kashmiri needs ؠ (U+0620). Native speakers consulted for the report did not accept the Pashto letter as correct. We have not re-tested this; check what your keyboard inserts (see the mistakes section below).

If you prefer open-source software, Indic Keyboard from the Indic Project (Apache 2.0 licence, on F-Droid) includes Kashmiri in Perso-Arabic (typed on a QWERTY layout), Kashmiri InScript in Devanagari and, since version 4.0 (October 2026), Kashmiri in Sharada.

iPhone and iPad

Apple's iOS feature-availability page lists “Kashmiri (Arabic)” and “Kashmiri (Devanagari)” among its keyboard languages. Add one in Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard, then switch with the globe key. Third-party keyboards (including Gboard for iOS) can also be installed, but Google's iPhone help pages do not list which languages its iOS version supports, so we cannot confirm Kashmiri there.

Windows, macOS and Linux

macOS

The macOS feature-availability page lists the same two Kashmiri keyboards. Add them in System Settings → Keyboard → Text Input → Edit → +. Turn on the Keyboard Viewer from the input menu to see where each character sits.

Windows

Windows has no Kashmiri keyboard layout. When you add the Kashmiri language, Microsoft's default input settings assign the Urdu keyboard for Perso-Arabic and the Hindi Traditional keyboard for Devanagari. The Urdu layout is built for Urdu, so expect to be missing Kashmiri letters such as ٲ, ۄ andؠ. Options:

• Arvind Iyengar's Perso-Arabic layout for Urdu, Kashmiri and Shahmukhi Panjabi and his Devanagari layout for Hindi, Kashmiri and Sindhi (2013), both for Windows, are archived in the University of New England repository.
• Type on an online keyboard (below) and paste.

Linux

Through IBus with ibus-m17n, Linux offers the m17n input method ks-kbd, written by Mohammad Nayeem Teli in 2009. We checked the current file: it follows a school-textbook layout and has no key for ؠ, ٲ, ۄ, the wavy hamza below, the inverted damma or the small v above. It is fine for Urdu-style text, but you cannot type standard Kashmiri vowels with it. The Wikimedia keyboard of the same name (next section) does include them.

Fonts that render Kashmiri correctly

A missing character shows as an empty box, or the system silently borrows it from another font in a different style. In October 2026 we checked which fonts contain the Kashmiri characters listed above. This checks coverage only, not how well each mark is positioned.

Kashmiri yeh ؠ needs particular care. Its initial and medial forms have a small ring below; its final and isolated forms should be a short “taler ye” with no ring. The Unicode Standard corrected its description in version 16.0. A W3C Arabic-script gap report notes that many Naskh fonts, including the Windows fonts Arial, Tahoma, Segoe UI and Courier New, still draw the ring in final position. Noto fixed its Naskh, Sans and Kufi Arabic fonts in October 2025, so use a recent version. Nastaliq fonts generally do this correctly. For everyday reading and writing, install Noto Nastaliq Urdu from Google Fonts (the newer version, not the copy that ships with macOS) and set it as the font for Kashmiri text.

Common mistakes: Urdu and Arabic substitutes

Many characters look alike on screen but are different code points. Text containing the wrong ones may look correct, but search, sorting, spell-checking and machine translation treat it as different text. Here are the substitutions to watch for:

To check a piece of text, paste it into a Unicode inspector such as r12a's Unicode code converter, which shows the code point of every character.

Online keyboards and converters

• Wikimedia input methods. On Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites, the Universal Language Selector offers ks-kbd and ks-inscript. The Perso-Arabic ks-kbd (version 2.2, 2023, by Parag Nemade, Iflaq and Amir E. Aharoni) includes ؠ, ٲ, ۄ and the Kashmiri vowel marks.
• Lexilogos. Xavier Nègre's Kashmiri keyboard lets you type phonetically in Latin letters, then copy the result. It links to Devanagari and Sharada versions.
• Legacy InPage text. Much older Kashmiri text was typeset in InPage, which does not use Unicode. A converter is planned on our digitisation page but is not built yet.

Once your text is in clean Unicode, paste it into our translator. For dictionaries, corpora and other tools, see the Resource Hub and our guide to Kashmiri NLP resources.

Sources

• Unicode Character Database, NamesList.txt
• M. Goregaokar, “Report on Kashmiri Yeh”, Unicode L2/23-273R (2024)
• W3C alreq issue 287: Kashmiri yeh final forms
• Google: Gboard for Android gets new languages and tools (2017)
• Gboard Help: Set up Gboard (Android)
• Apple: iOS feature availability and macOS feature availability
• Microsoft: Default input profiles for Windows language packs
• Indic Keyboard on F-Droid
• m17n-db: ks-kbd.mim
• Wikimedia jquery.ime Kashmiri rules
• Wikipedia: Kashmiri language, Writing system