Step by step
How to use the punjabi keyboard
- 1The keyboard above is already set to Punjabi; 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 Punjabi in a browser
Adding Punjabi 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 Punjabi occasionally: typing a name or a village exactly as Punjabi records spell it, writing a line of Gurbani or a greeting correctly, or filling in a Punjab government form or a school exercise. Every key is on screen, the arrangement is the standard one, and when you are finished there is nothing to undo.
Tippi, bindi and addak
Gurmukhi's three small marks do an enormous amount of work, and they are the part of the script a newcomer has to learn deliberately. Tippi ੰ and bindi ਂ both mark nasalisation, and which one a word takes depends on the vowel it follows rather than on the sound — ਪੰਜਾਬੀ takes the tippi, ਨਹੀਂ takes the bindi.
Addak ੱ doubles the consonant that follows it, which is how ਪੱਕਾ and ਸੱਚ are written. It has no equivalent in Devanagari, where a doubled consonant is written out as a conjunct, and it is the mark most often left off by someone typing Punjabi from Hindi habits.
Gurmukhi also has no ष, so the क्ष conjunct key of the standard layout is blank on this board. Punjabi does not need it, and a blank key says so rather than producing a character the script never defined.
Subjoined letters, not conjuncts
Gurmukhi does not stack consonants the way Devanagari does. It has exactly three subjoined forms — ੍ਹ, ੍ਰ and ੍ਵ — and they attach beneath the letter they follow rather than forming a new composite shape.
They are typed with the halant on the D position, exactly as a Devanagari conjunct would be: ਪ then the halant then ਰ gives ਪ੍ਰ, which is how ਪ੍ਰਧਾਨ begins. What does not work is trying to stack anything else; Gurmukhi simply writes the letters in sequence instead.
This is one of the places where knowing InScript from another Indian language helps and also misleads. The key positions transfer perfectly. The typographic habits do not, and Gurmukhi is the plainer script of the two.
AnmolLipi, Asees and the Unicode question
Punjabi publishing ran for years on non-Unicode fonts — AnmolLipi, Asees, Satluj — which map Gurmukhi shapes onto Latin codepoints. A file typed in Asees contains Latin letters and displays as Punjabi only where Asees is installed, which is why Punjabi documents so often arrive as nonsense.
Gurbani text has a particular version of this problem, because a great deal of it circulates in legacy fonts, and getting a line subtly wrong in scripture is a worse outcome than getting a form wrong. Unicode Gurmukhi is what modern Gurbani sources publish, and it is what a phone, a search engine or a projector can render without help.
Everything typed on this board is Unicode. It pastes into anything, and it stays Punjabi when it gets there.
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 Punjabi 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 addak, the doubling mark?
It has its own key on the board. Type it before the consonant it doubles, as in ਪੱਕਾ.
Tippi or bindi — which nasal mark do I use?
It depends on the preceding vowel rather than the sound, so it is a spelling rule of the word. Copy what the printed form shows when you are transcribing a name.
Why is one key blank?
Gurmukhi has no ष, so the क्ष conjunct position of the standard layout is genuinely empty in this script.
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.