Phonetic Indic keyboards now available for Windows 10

What you need to know

  • Microsoft released smart phonetic keyboards for 10 Indian languages.
  • The keyboards support transliterating Indic text.
  • The keyboards will increase typing speed and accuracy by at least 20 percent, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft released phonetic keyboards for ten Indian languages on Windows 10. These new keyboards are a part of the May 2019 update for Windows 10 and are available in Hindi, Bangla, Tamil, Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Odia, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam.

The keyboards support transliterated Indic text which allows users to type with Latin characters and have text automatically converted from one script to another. Microsoft shared an example in their blog post announcing the release of the keyboards:

For instance, if we type 'Bharat' in Latin characters, the Phonetic keyboard will transliterate final output to भारत (Hindi), ভারত (Bengali), ભારત (Gujarati) or ਭਾਰਤ (Punjabi) depending on the target language."

Microsoft states that these keyboards will improve typing speed and accuracy by at least 20 percent.

These new tools will be available in addition to the current keyboards that are available for Windows 10. Their addition to Windows 10 will save many users from having to install third-party keyboard solutions.

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Sean Endicott
News Writer and apps editor

Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com.