Step by step
How to use the hebrew keyboard
- 1The keyboard above is already set to Hebrew; you can switch language from the list if you need another.
- 2Click the keys on screen, or just type — your own keyboard is remapped to the layout shown.
- 3Use Shift for the second layer, which carries the rest of the characters.
- 4Copy the text when you are done, or download it as a .txt file.
Why type Hebrew in a browser
Adding Hebrew to an operating system is a settings-menu expedition that ends in a keyboard you cannot see: the letters are not printed on your keys, so you are typing blind in a script you may have no muscle memory for, and you have changed a system-wide setting to write one line.
The usual workaround is worse — hunting characters in a character-map utility and pasting them one at a time, or copying words out of search results and hoping the spelling survived the trip.
A visible keyboard solves the specific problem of writing Hebrew occasionally: typing a name or a word for a form, a search or a citation, quoting a Hebrew phrase inside an English document, or writing a short message to someone who reads Hebrew. Every key is on screen, the arrangement is the standard one, and when you are finished there is nothing to undo.
Five letters with a second form for the end of a word
Hebrew has five final forms — ך ם ן ף ץ — used when their letter closes a word. Unlike Arabic's positional shapes, these are not chosen for you: they are separate characters with their own keys, and picking the right one is part of spelling.
So שלום ends in ם and not מ, and getting that wrong produces a string that will not match the word anywhere. The final forms sit on the same keys as their ordinary partners' neighbours, in the standard Israeli arrangement this layout uses.
There is no upper and lower case in Hebrew. Shift on this board does not produce capitals, because there are none to produce.
Niqqud is not on the keyboard, and usually should not be
Hebrew's vowel points — the dots and dashes under the letters — are called niqqud, and modern Hebrew leaves them out. Newspapers, websites, signage and messages are written unpointed, and a reader supplies the vowels from context.
They appear in the Bible, in poetry, in children's books and in dictionaries, and they are not on the standard layout that this keyboard follows. If you need pointed text, this is not the tool that will get you there.
For everything else — a name, a word, a search, a phrase in a document — unpointed Hebrew is what is expected, and it is what this board produces.
Direction, and quoting Hebrew inside English
The text box runs right to left for Hebrew, and the most common real use of this page is a short Hebrew run inside an otherwise English document. That is where the bidirectional algorithm shows itself: punctuation next to the boundary can appear on the side you did not expect, and parentheses around a Hebrew phrase can look reversed.
The characters are stored in logical order — the order you typed them — and any conforming renderer will display them correctly. What you see in a text field and what you get in a finished document can differ slightly at the edges, and the text is the same.
Copying the Hebrew run on its own, rather than with the surrounding punctuation, avoids most of it.
Nothing is uploaded, and nothing is installed
The whole keyboard is data in the page. There is no request to a server, no account and nothing stored, so the names, addresses and private messages that people type into a tool like this stay in the tab they were typed in.
You can also skip the clicking. Your own keys are remapped to the Hebrew layout as you type, matched by physical position rather than by the letter printed on them — which means it works the same whether your system runs QWERTY, AZERTY or something else entirely.
Copy the result, or save it as a .txt file. Editing keys behave normally throughout: Backspace deletes, the arrows move, and Ctrl or Cmd shortcuts reach your clipboard as usual.
Answers
Frequently asked questions
How do I type a final letter like ם?
It has its own key. Hebrew's five final forms are separate characters, not automatic variants, and using the wrong one misspells the word.
Can I add niqqud, the vowel points?
Not on this layout. Modern Hebrew is written unpointed, and the standard keyboard this follows has no niqqud keys.
Does Shift give capitals?
No. Hebrew has no case, so there is nothing for Shift to produce.
Do I need to install a language pack?
No. Nothing is installed and no system setting is changed. The keyboard is part of the page and disappears when you close the tab.
Is my text private?
Yes. Nothing is uploaded — the keystrokes never leave your browser, which matters for the names and addresses this kind of tool is mostly used for.