A few months back I bought myself a macbook pro. Really i think it was a good decision. I am very happy with the quality of hardware and some of the cool features that Mac OS X Tiger offers. So today while I was browsing, I came across webdunia.com. It publishes it’s content in 9 different Indian languages including Hindi, my mother tounge. I was using Firefox 2.0.07 and all I could see on the site was images and ????. All the hindi text appeared as question marks. I immediately thought that hindi fonts are not installed. I decided to install the font set to see my favourite curvy characters. I search very hard on the internet, googling this afternoon to get Hindi working on my Mac. But to no avail.
After my evening tea I sat again and decided to give it another try. But this time to my surprise I could read everything without doing anything. I had no clue what was going on. Then I realised I was using Safari, the pre installed browser. After some more search on net I came to know that Indic rendering of Firefox on Mac OS X is not up to the mark yet, but is perfect on Safari.
To sum up:
On Safari with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger the handling of Indian scripts is amazingly flawless.
On Firefox unfortunately as of today Indian scripts can’t be rendered well enough.
If you wish to type in Hindi:
1) Go to System Preferences
2) Click on International
3) Click on the Input tab and select Devanagari and/or Devanagari-QWERTY
4) Check the Show Input Menu in Menu Bar for easy switching
And this is how to write word Hindi using hindi script
Anubhav Goyal 
September 28, 2007 at 5:38 pm
I agree – Safari and Apple Mail do a great job of rendering Hindi/Devanagari pages with no problem. I have researched this also in great detail to get things working with Firefox – but no luck so far.
November 6, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Hi! I need help! I have to do subtitles for ad industrial video in Hindi, and the MacPro that I use at work doesn’t have some characters. Can you suggest me how to do?
Thank you very much and sorry for my english!
PS can you write me and e-mail? Thanks!
November 7, 2007 at 11:29 am
misterkiwi, on the installlation disk no.2 that comes with Mac there are all the fonts available. Please try to install the hindi fonts from there.
November 17, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Anubhav,
Thanks for your entry. It was most illuminating. Have you figured out how to actually type contracted letters? For example my last name is gupta and to be written correctly in hindi, the pa and ga are joined. How do you accomplish this? I have a very rudimentary knowledge of written hindi as I have never lived in India. I am trying to improve this and also want to type some hindu prayers so that I can play with them graphically.
Thanks!
Atul
November 23, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Thank you for the help in clicking on International and choosing the Devanagari font. But I don’t see how to have it appear in Word, or in any actual application.
Also, do you–or does anyone– know any programs that would help me learn to type in Hindi?
Many thanks,
Susan
November 27, 2007 at 5:43 am
@atul – the way to type the joint letters is to use the visarga i.e, to get gupta in hindi, you would type gupfta (the “f” between “p” and ‘t” will give you the desired result गुप्ता). All half/joined letters can be produced this way! All the inline hindi text on my website has been done like this. Please email me if you would like more help.
@susan – select “devanagari qwerty” as your keyboard, open textedit and type away! (do install Devanagari MT font)
Kumud
October 18, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Dear Anubhav,
Would you know how can I find the “r” vowel in the sanskrit 2003 keyboard, as is needed for the hindi word “praapti? So far, I am only able to locate the “r” vowel on the the character viewer as a combined letter.
With many thanks,
Aashaa
P.S. I need a sanskrit or hindi font for my Macbook Pro OS X. Is the sanskrit 2003 the best font available at present or is there another font that is easier to use?
March 29, 2011 at 3:18 am
Hello,
How can I type half च in the hindi word bacchey. Thanks for your help!
October 9, 2011 at 1:30 am
For example, acche ( अच्छे ) would be entered as acfCe. I still find something like hindiqalam dot com a bit easier than Devanagari QWERTY.
June 17, 2019 at 11:29 pm
हेलो अजमनि। मैं न्या न्या मैक का प्रयोग कर रहा हूँ। मुझे हिन्दी टाईपिंग अाती भी है। लेकिन जो एक समस्या मेरे सामने मैक पर आ रहा है, मुख्य रूप से जब मैं माईक्रोसाॉफ्ट अॉफिस का प्रयोग कर रहा हू, वह है संयुक्ताक्षर का प्रयोग। जब भी संयुक्ताक्षर टाईप करता हूँ तो लेटर ब्रेक हो जाता है। कृप्या कोई सुझाव दें।
December 7, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Am currently studying Hindi at the Landour Language School in Mussoorie, Uttarkhand, India. Am transcribing most of my lesson notes onto my MacBook. This is really quite easy, but have found that TextEdit is the best for the Devanagari/English data entry. Unfortunately I find Word impossible, and Pages flaky especially in tabbing. Want to try out some of the alternate word processing programs…any suggestions out there? Am concerned that I’ll have problems with TextEdit when I come to printouts and more advanced formatting.
December 8, 2007 at 12:40 am
There are some good word processing softwares available for Mac OSX. I think Dan for you, Mellel will be a good alternative. Check this link
Some other alternatives are Apple’s iWork, Mariner Write
December 12, 2007 at 7:17 am
Hi Kumud,
I selected “Devanagari QWERTY” as my keyboard, and then opened Textedit, selected DevanagariMT as the font, and then started to type, but still wasn’t able to get the Hindi font to appear. The keyboard would still input the same English characters. Is there anything that I still need to do?
Thanks for all your help!
Sarvesh
December 28, 2007 at 7:22 pm
@Sarvesh – what version of MacOS X are you using? Please email ajmanik at gmail dot com if you are using 10.4+ and it still does not work for you.
January 27, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I actually forgot if one needs to install the fonts from the disk on Tiger, or just the System Preferences setup I mentioned here is enough? Perhaps I did install them after all, but if any of you remembers do let me know.
February 3, 2008 at 12:13 am
You can also download Padma from the Firefox add-on site. See: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/873 and it works great!
March 1, 2008 at 5:29 am
hi anubhav
it seems helpful while visiting ur site.
i want to get more information on topic “how to read hindi fonts on client’s machine without installing it”
please guide me thoroughly.
June 3, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Hi Anubhavjee,
I have recently bought a mac with OSX Leopard (10.5.2). As per you suggestion regarding hindi font and reading/writing , I did something like this (as u have suggested):
If you wish to type in Hindi:
1) Go to System Preferences
2) Click on International
3) Click on the Input tab and select Devanagari and/or Devanagari-QWERTY
4) Check the Show Input Menu in Menu Bar for easy ”
I am still not able to read/write . Could you suggest me what to do next?
Thanking you in anticipation!
Regards,
vs
October 5, 2009 at 6:45 pm
is it possible to download virtual Hindi keypad, i mean typing by using mouse
October 11, 2008 at 10:33 pm
hi everybody,
i would like to know please if someone wanna help me how to write my name in Hindi:
baptiste
If someone know also how to write my name in the different dialects.
Sincerely
much appreciated
baptiste
November 16, 2008 at 2:12 am
Anubhav,
While the Devanagri QWERTY keyboard works for all Mac apps. I am on version 10.5.5. I am not able to use this on Microsoft Office for Mac version 2008. Any ideas on how i can type in Hindi in Microsoft Office for Mac?
Regards
Raghu
December 3, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I am having problems with typing certain samyoga characters in devanagari on Mac. For e.g. when I type arjuna, the j disappears. Anyone knows how to fix this or where I can seek help?
Soon after I type the u in ju, the j disappears:
अर् जुन
अर्जुन
thanks
February 14, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Hi, even I was curious how one would type the ra symbol on top like arjun or parvat. Could someone please explain that to me?
March 2, 2010 at 12:29 am
पर्वत् , अर्जुन
After typing in the ‘r’ use the symbol (I forget what you call it) that eliminates the understood vowel ‘a’ after a consonant. It is located between the ‘द’ and the ‘ग’ on the devanagari qwerty. I used it at the end of parvat. पर्वत् Then when you type in the ‘व’
it will come out correctly.
Hope that helps.
February 4, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Hi All could i get a help of someone who can show me the script in hindi for Welcome
April 9, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I am using Mac OSX 10.4.11 and have been trying to type some Sanskrit prayers with Devanagari (Querty). I am having some success but can someone please tell me how to do the following:
1) how do I get the aspirated letters like bh, gh, dh
2) other letters also I can’t find like the other sh, or the other n or the vowel r that would be used to spell Krishna. What is the procedure for those letters?
3) words beginning with a vowel like Upanishad. Is there a way to get the letter U by itself.
4)how do I get the visarga as in namah
5) how do I get the bindi?
If someone can help me with this I would be really grateful. Thanks!
Regards,
Kelly
April 9, 2009 at 6:13 pm
I am using Mac OSX 10.4.11 and have been trying to type some Sanskrit prayers with Devanagari (Querty). I am having some success but can someone please tell me how to do the following:
1) how do I get the aspirated letters like bh, gh, dh
2) other letters also I can’t find like the other sh, or the other n or the vowel r that would be used to spell Krishna. What is the procedure for those letters?
3) words beginning with a vowel like Upanishad. Is there a way to get the letter U by itself.
4)how do I get the visarga as in namah
5) how do I get the bindi?
If someone can help me with this I would be really grateful. Thanks!
Regards,
Kelly
June 18, 2009 at 2:53 am
I had been wanting to experiment with hindi / devnagiri typing on my new MacBook Pro for quite some time now… and your post was extremely spot on…
In order to learn the different keyboard keys to type better, you need to check the box for ‘Keyboard Viewer’ which under the Input tab. Then, you can see a menu item called ‘Show Keyboard Viewer’ which then shows you a mini keyboard on the screen – thus helping you to type better and to figure out which keys are for what alphabet… in fact, you can even type out your stuff from that keyboard itself too…
Thanks for posting this information!
October 5, 2009 at 6:48 pm
thanks hope this will help me
August 31, 2009 at 5:25 am
Kelly, not sure if you got your answers. Since I didn’t see them in the posts, here it goes –
भ (bh) – shift b
घ (gh) – shift g
ध (dh) – shift d
ष (sh) – x
ण (other N) – shift n
कृ (r as in krishna) – shift r
उ (U as in Upanishad) – Alt U (don’t know second U)
: (visarg) – would colon (shift 😉 do?
Devanagari-QWERTY works good for most of the letters but haven’t figured out how to type ठ (Th) or ढ (Dh) yet. I don’t see these letters even in the Keyboard viewer. I can type those using just Devanagari layout but QWERTY layout is really easy for somebody like me who is new to Devanagari typing. Would appreciate if any body can help with this.
Regards,
Rajgopal
December 5, 2012 at 3:14 pm
keep pressing alt or control or command or shift till you see the character on the character key board
September 8, 2009 at 8:33 pm
trying to type devanagari on word for mac. works perfect in text edit, but can’t find a font for word. any advice?
and
ठ tha is (shift-alt)t
ढ dha is (shift-alt)d
visarga ः (shift)h
ऋ r (alt)r
ऋृ longr (alt)r then (shift)r
r symbol for krsna ृ (shift)r कृ
उu (alt)u
ऊ longu (alt-shift)u
hope that helps…
March 1, 2010 at 10:44 am
Thanks everybody, your posts were quite helpful. Am hoping somebody can tell me how to get the bindu and chandrabindu on the Devanagari QWERTY keyboard [as in “मैं न मानूँगा”]. Have gone through the keyboard viewer without much luck. Thanks in advance.
March 2, 2010 at 12:17 am
press the shift key and you will see the chandrabindu on the lower left right next to the क्ष
मँ न मानूँगा
hope that helps
Kelly
September 11, 2009 at 5:02 am
So I successfully used the above technique (insert ‘F’ between letters) to get joint letters.
However, I can’t figure out how to type out फ (the hindi letter for F) unless I paste it directly from the character palette
Would prefer a solution for Devanagari-QWERTY.
Any help would be appreciated.
September 16, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Hi Shrey,
You can get it if you type (shift) p = फ on Devnagari – QWERTY.
Hope this helps.
September 21, 2009 at 8:23 am
1) Go to System Preferences
2) Click on International
3) Click on the Input tab and select Devanagari and/or Devanagari-QWERTY
4) Check the Show Input Menu in Menu Bar for easy switching
i have tried doing the same for hindi reading on mac..its still not coming..i dont want to type anything..i just want to read hindi material available on web..how would that be possible?plz help
September 21, 2009 at 9:32 am
Simply view the site on Safari. Safari by default display hindi text. Hope this helps
October 1, 2009 at 8:16 am
some fonts override eachother when i open a web page. Is there anything to correct with font book or font folder ?
January 15, 2010 at 1:14 am
Amazing, found your post on Ask.Happy I finally tested it out. Unsure if its my Chrome browser,but sometimes when I visit your site, the fonts are really small? Anyway, love your webpage and will return.Bye
May 18, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Mr. Anubhav ,
I am a student of class V . I need to make my project & request you to send a font for my use of typing .
thank you ,
Athira
November 15, 2010 at 9:01 pm
which font r u looking for
April 13, 2011 at 6:33 pm
do we have some tip in mac something like in google transliterate where in we get to choose word . and how to see that whole varnmala from where we can choose alphabet like google transliterate.
this is very informative.
thanks
May 6, 2011 at 2:59 pm
how do i read a an rtf document in hindi on mac?
June 13, 2011 at 3:25 am
I am using Mac Snow L latest OSX version. I have various Hindi and Punjabi fonts in the Font Book. When I use pages I can use all those fonts. But when I use MS Word I don’t get those fonts. Even when I cut and paste from Pages MS Word shows garbage.
How can I use all the fonts in my Font Book in Ms Word?
Microsoft has terrible after sales service. There is no way to get such simple tips.
July 9, 2011 at 10:22 am
I am using Mac Snow L latest OSX version. अाप सबका धनयावाद । मै अब हिंदी में लिख सकता हूं ।
How can you type half न. Like in धनयावाद. I could not fix that.
July 30, 2011 at 6:30 pm
Hi, Anubhav – Thanks for your blog! I was killing myself trying to do the conjunct consonants until I found the entries here re using the “f” key – and working in TEXT EDIT.
I do have this question: Has it been the experience of you or others (as it was mine) that certain keystrokes involving the “f” key do not produce the appropriate result in any of the Adobe Creative Suite products? For example: in InDesign and Illustrator, typing “t-f-r” yileds “t-virama-r”, not the correct “tr” conjunct – as in सुत्र.
One more BTW – Wikipedia has a ridiculously complete chart of maybe all the possible Nagari letter-form combinations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari#Accent_marks
One can actually cut and paste these into TextEdit if one doesn’t want to figure out the QWERTY in some extreme cases.
August 15, 2011 at 9:56 am
Very helpful! I’m going to try it now- hope it works
October 17, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Thank you so much!!! I’ve been trying to figure out how to type Hindi script on my Mac. I am attempting to learn Hindi and frequent the ispeakhindi.com site. I know this will really help me! Bless you!
October 19, 2011 at 9:08 am
You can also download devanagari hindi fonts from http://www.devanagarifonts.net
October 27, 2011 at 3:27 am
Dhanyavad Mohit! दहनयवाद Mohit! Is that correct?
Will explore the new site you sent. It will will me lots of opportunities to practice. Have happy Mac times!
October 30, 2011 at 7:40 pm
anubahv!!i did what you said to do but it still didnt happen!!!everything STILL comes in english…help asap plssss….need it for a project
January 21, 2012 at 3:29 am
तो अब रेमिन्गटन टाइपराइटर के दिन चले गए। मैने दो महीने की मेहनत् से हिन्दी टाइपिंग सीखी, सरकारी नौकरी पकड़ी, अौर अब सब सीखना बेकार गया। अब ये नया keyboard layout सीखना पड़ेगा। क्या कोइ जानता है कि पुरानी हिन्दी रेमिन्गटन layout मैकबुक मे install हो सकती है या नहीं ?
अौर —->
कोइ में बड़ी इ कैसे लाएं ?
January 21, 2012 at 3:47 am
मिल गया जवाब: बड़ी इ के लिये।
shift + option + i = ई
धन्यवाद दोस्तों ।
March 1, 2012 at 10:43 am
How to write half word in devnagari in mac book pro…
very simple
follow the steps
धन्यवाद =
Type
shift + d = ध
n = न
(now press ” f ” key & type ” y ” = न्य) (to make any alphabet half press ” f ” key )
va= वा
d = द
so i.e धन्यवाद
USE ” F ” KEY FOR TO MAKE ANY ALPHABET HALF
to make preveous alphabet half press ” f ” key with next alphabet…
हिन्दी = (hi = हि, n = न, fd + shift + i = न्दी )
try it…
enjoy
June 7, 2012 at 2:19 pm
मैं Glaani (shame , disgrace ) को लिखना चाहता हूँ पर आधा ग कैसे लिखा जाये? जब कोशिश करो तो “ग्लानी” बन जाता है. कोई सुझाव?
July 23, 2012 at 3:38 am
dhanyawad
्धन्यवाद
October 6, 2012 at 12:39 am
i am trying to use f to join the consonants but it doesn’t work at all, i type kft but it keeps on going me an error…i can even see the t when i type to after f. help plea
October 27, 2012 at 12:21 am
I have been able to activate the hindi keyboard and I can type in the hindi characters (but only at random) since I do not have the keyboard layout on my keyboard. Is there a program available that will display the devnagri character layout on screen that I can refer to when typing on the keyboard? The other alternative is to get keyboard stickers but I would like to avoid this if possible since I do not plan to type more than a few lines in hindi at any given time
January 19, 2013 at 2:49 am
हिंदी keyboard works well every where sans Microsoft word and adobe …. do anyone have solution for that
January 26, 2013 at 5:43 pm
Do opentype fonts work in mac? i haven’t tried it….
January 30, 2013 at 8:52 am
how do i type hindi font in text edit file.
January 30, 2013 at 8:56 am
how do i activate the hindi keyboard so that i can type hindi text.
February 18, 2013 at 9:39 pm
U constructed a number of great tips throughout
ur article, “Hindi font on Mac Anubhav Goyal”.
I will end up coming to your web site soon enough. Thank you ,Renee
May 16, 2013 at 10:19 pm
Mobi – CHM is perhaps the only e-reader which supports the CHM
file format. The intent was for PDF files to provide a way
to distribute documents electronically and have them display or print consistently regardless of
the type of computer system. So, without spending any money (assuming you already had a
computer), you have your equipment.
October 23, 2013 at 1:19 am
Hi..i tried all steps below but when i type on word doc for devanagri regular font it switches automatically to devanagri san which i don’t want..i just want to use devangri regular and not devangri san font..please help..
1) Go to System Preferences
2) Click on International
3) Click on the Input tab and select Devanagari and/or Devanagari-QWERTY
4) Check the Show Input Menu in Menu Bar for easy switching
April 2, 2014 at 2:45 pm
Dear Anubhav,
Your article and comments have been very helpful. It is not practicable to come back to you every time a doubt arises. I have selected Devnagari QWERTY as you have advised. Is there a help manual for Devnagari Macbook Pro which mentions all the phonetic (i.e. transliteration mode) equivalents of Devnagari letters, special letters, matras in Roman keyboards? (Hindi Indic for Windows has such help manual as well as a demonstration keyboard which simply lists the transliterations.)
Mac also has one, but it is not comprehensive, and it is not a list of equivalents, but a virtual keyboard.
AK
April 5, 2014 at 4:00 am
Dear Anubhav
मेैंने अपने मेकबुक एयर २०१३ पर देवनागरी भाषा का उपयोग करना शुरु किया किन्तु देवनागरी भाषा विकल्प चुनने के बाद सभी फोन्टस् में नम्बर (१, २, ३, ४,……) हिन्दी स्टाईल में आते हैं जबकि मैं देवनागरी भाषा के साथ रेगुलर स्टाईल के नम्बर (1, 2, 3, 4……) का प्रयोग करना चाहता हूँ जैसा कि अपने विन्डोज कम्प्यूटर पर करता था। कृपया बतायें कि यह किस प्रकार संभव हो सकता है।
April 16, 2014 at 9:28 am
thanks
April 25, 2014 at 1:37 pm
just not able to write प्रेस on the mac hindi keyboard, it comes out as प् रेस in all places. Any help?
February 10, 2015 at 12:46 pm
i want to have a tool like “Google hindi input” for MAC
I have iMac with OS X yosemite 10.10.2
Can anybody help?
February 18, 2015 at 3:05 pm
Hi! I selected Devnagri QWERTY from system preferences but still unable to type in Hindi. Could anyone help me out here?Thanks
August 9, 2015 at 5:14 am
I need your help.. Mujhe mangal font Hindi devnagri m question mark lagana nhi aa raha .. Plz help me or bataye m kaise kar sakti hu use..mera test h
December 2, 2015 at 3:13 pm
Main hindi me हूँ likhana chahta hu mujhe chandrabindu nhi samjh m aa rha h plz help me
December 22, 2015 at 6:29 pm
Namastey ji…me ek writer hu, me Final Draft software Par hindi me likhna chahta hu, jo ki me nhi likh pa raha to kya koi bata sakta he ye kese possible hoga ?? Plz meri madad kare…
November 25, 2016 at 10:10 am
Is there a way I can type Devanagari in Microsoft Word on Mac. While Devanagari qwerty works perfectly in text editor, conjuncts, etc do not work in Word. Please help.
July 11, 2018 at 8:34 pm
anyone interested in more hindi fonts visit here
September 4, 2018 at 2:25 pm
very iseful and correct
March 28, 2020 at 12:28 pm
after all the instructions given by u Anubhav iam not able to type Hindi on Mac plss help