Testers
Hindi Keyboard Tester
Test a Hindi keyboard in your browser. Check every switch, confirm an InScript layout is applied, and see whether Devanagari really reaches the box.
Reads real keydown/keyup events and the characters they produce. Nothing you type is uploaded. Tab and Escape always keep their normal behaviour, so you're never stuck here.
- Last key
- —press any key
- Presses
- 0
- Keys tested
- 0 / 104
- Chattering
- None
- Largest rollover
- 0 keys
InScript layout check
Press the eight home-row keys — including the virama on D, which forms every conjunct in the language.
Rest your fingers on the home row and press the eight keys under them.
Devanagari output test
Works either way: type directly on InScript, or type namaste and let transliteration convert it.
Nothing typed yet.
IME composition check: no composition events yet. InScript typing produces none — only transliteration does.
Key log
Press any key to start.
Hindi is typed two entirely different ways, and knowing which one you're using changes what counts as a fault on this page. An InScript board sends Devanagari directly, one key at a time. A transliteration setup sends nothing but Latin letters to the operating system and lets software rebuild them into Devanagari afterwards — sometimes rewriting a cluster you already saw on screen. The switches, the layout and the conversion can each fail on their own, so this page tests them separately.
InScript layout check: is the Devanagari layout actually applied?
With an InScript source selected, go across the eight home-row keys in sequence and compare the sign printed on each cap with the character that actually lands in the box. A mismatch here means the input source isn't InScript — not that a switch failed, since the switches behave identically underneath either way.
The D key is in that sample deliberately. It carries the virama, or halant, the mark that strips a consonant of its built-in vowel so it can merge into the next one. Because of it, InScript is the one common case where a single correct keypress changes something already sitting on screen rather than just adding to it: type क, then virama, then ष, and the visible result isn't three separate signs but one conjunct, क्ष, with the first two redrawn as part of it. That's expected behaviour, not the previous letters being altered by anything other than your own next keystroke. A dead virama key looks nothing like a broken switch — it looks like every conjunct in your typing quietly falling apart into loose consonants.
Devanagari output test: what actually reaches the box
This check works whichever input method you use. Type a word into the box and it counts how much of what arrived was Devanagari rather than Latin.
It matters more for Hindi than for most scripts because of a problem specific to this language on the web: legacy fonts such as Krutidev and DevLys predate wide support for Unicode Devanagari, and they work by remapping ordinary Latin key codes onto glyphs that only look like Devanagari while that specific font is loaded — the underlying character is still Latin the whole time. Paste that text anywhere else, or view it without the font installed, and it turns back into meaningless Latin letters and punctuation. This test reads the underlying character, not the rendered glyph, so real Devanagari passes and Krutidev-style text is reported as Latin — however correct it looked in the box it came from — because that is genuinely what it still is.
The composition line beneath the count reports something else: whether the browser saw a transliteration buffer open and close while you typed. If it did, an input method is converting your keystrokes before InScript would ever need to. Devanagari arriving with no composition events means InScript itself is doing the work; Latin arriving with no composition events means nothing Hindi is active on this machine at all.
Reading the InScript board
InScript is phonetic and handed by design, not by the accident of history that shaped QWERTY: vowels and matras sit under the left hand, consonants under the right, and the same finger positions carry over to Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and the rest of the Indic scripts once you've learned it for one.
Several keys carry a mark next to a dotted circle rather than a full letter. Those are matras — vowel signs that are combining marks, not standalone letters, so they cannot be drawn without a consonant to attach to. The dotted circle is the standard Unicode placeholder used to print one on a keycap anyway; it isn't part of what the key actually sends, which is a single matra that attaches to whatever consonant you typed immediately before it.
Numpad test on an InScript board
InScript stops at the letter keys: the number row above them is the only place digits are typed, and the numpad, several rows below, isn't part of the Devanagari layout at all. For Num Lock, board size, ANSI versus ISO, and how many simultaneous keys a board can register, the keyboard tester guide is the fuller reference — none of it is specific to Hindi.
Questions
- Why is my Hindi keyboard typing English?
- Because nothing on the keyboard decides what a key produces — the operating system's active input source does, and the caps are only paint. If your board has Devanagari printed on it and Windows or macOS is set to English, every switch works perfectly and every switch gives you a Latin letter, which is why an ordinary keyboard tester finds no fault. Use the InScript layout check on this page: press the eight home-row keys and it reports which character each switch produced against the sign printed on it. If they all come back Latin and you type Hindi by transliteration rather than on an InScript board, that is expected — in that case the Devanagari output test underneath is the one that matters.
- What is the difference between InScript and transliteration?
- They are two completely different ways of typing the same language, and most people use the second. InScript is a real keyboard layout, standardised by the Government of India: Devanagari signs are printed on the keys, vowels and matras sit under the left hand, consonants under the right, and one keystroke produces one letter or one matra. Transliteration is software — you type namaste on ordinary Latin keys and an input method such as Google Input Tools converts it to नमस्ते. On a transliteration setup the keyboard is a plain US keyboard and nothing about the hardware is Hindi at all, which is why this page checks both.
- How do I know if my Hindi input method is installed and running?
- Watch the IME composition check line under the output box. While a transliteration input method is converting your Latin letters, it holds the text in a buffer that has not been committed yet, and the browser announces that buffer opening and closing with its own events. If those events fire, an input method is installed and running on this machine. Note that InScript typing produces none of them — it does not need to convert anything, because each key already sends a Devanagari character directly. So no composition events plus Devanagari arriving means InScript is working, and no composition events plus Latin arriving means nothing Hindi is active at all.
- What is the virama key and why does it matter?
- It is the mark that strips a consonant of its built-in vowel so two consonants can join into a conjunct — the halant, printed on the key a US board shows as D. Devanagari needs it constantly: क् plus ष gives क्ष, and words like नमस्ते depend on it. That makes it the most-pressed key on an InScript board and the one whose failure is hardest to recognise, because a dead virama does not present as a broken key. It presents as your spelling silently going wrong, with letters sitting separately where they should have merged. The layout check on this page samples it deliberately for that reason.
- Why do some keys show a dotted circle next to the mark?
- Because those keys carry matras — combining vowel signs that by definition cannot stand alone. A matra has to attach to a consonant, so rendering one on its own leaves the browser to guess where to draw it, and it frequently lands in the wrong place or attaches to whatever character came before it. The dotted circle is the standard Unicode placeholder for exactly this situation and is what every printed InScript chart uses. It is not part of what the key sends: press the key marked with it and a single matra is what arrives.
- Is anything I type sent to a server?
- No. Every keystroke and every character it produced is read and counted inside this page, and none of it is uploaded. That matters here because testing an input method means typing real words rather than tapping keys at random. All-time totals live in this browser's local storage, so clearing your browser data clears them. The site counts page views in aggregate, which the privacy page describes in full.