All 36 letters of the Ọnwụ alphabet — dotted vowels ị ọ ụ, digraph keys like gb and kp, and proper tone marks — in your browser. Type real Igbo and paste it anywhere.
100% Free · No Account · Works Everywhere
300+Keyboards Soon
4B+Speakers Covered
100%Free Forever
0 / 5000
🇸🇦 Arabic
Amazigh
🇪🇹 Amharic
🇧🇩 Bengali
🇲🇲 Burmese
🇨🇳 Chinese
🇵🇭 Filipino
🇬🇷 Greek
🇮🇳 Gujarati
🇳🇬 Hausa
🇮🇳 Hindi
🇳🇬 Igbo
✓
🇯🇵 Japanese
🇮🇳 Kannada
🇰🇷 Korean
Kurdish
🇮🇳 Malayalam
🇮🇳 Marathi
🇲🇳 Mongolian
🇳🇵 Nepali
🇦🇫 Pashto
🇮🇷 Persian
🇮🇳 Punjabi
🇷🇺 Russian
🇵🇰 Sindhi
🇸🇴 Somali
🇮🇳 Tamil
🇮🇳 Telugu
🇹🇭 Thai
🇪🇷 Tigrinya
🇹🇷 Turkish
🇵🇰 Urdu
Uyghur
🇻🇳 Vietnamese
🇳🇬 Yoruba
22
# Special Characters
😊 Emoji
✨ Special
🔢 Numbers
Western
Symbols
Works with every appyou love
Ready-Made Igbo Combos
One click to insert — or copy straight to clipboard
How To Use
Three steps. Ten seconds.
Type
Type directly — all 36 Ọnwụ letters are on screen, with the digraphs (gb, kp, nw, ny…) as single keys.
1
Copy
Use the dotted vowel keys ị, ọ, ụ — vowel harmony means half of Igbo's words need them.
2
Paste
Add tone marks (´ `) on any vowel when meaning could blur — ákwá and àkwá are different words.
3
Igbo Keyboard for Any App
WhatsApp runs Nigeria — type dotted, correct Igbo for the family group and the hometown association, from Onitsha to Houston.Copy → paste into any app. No special settings needed.
Snapchat
Facebook hosts the big Igbo community pages and marketplace posts — write them in real orthography, not undotted approximation.
WhatsApp
Instagram and TikTok ride Igbo music — caption Phyno and Flavour lyrics with the dots and tones in place.
Instagram
YouTube's Igbo teaching channels and Nollywood clips draw huge comment threads — join them in proper script.
TikTok
Twitter/X hashtag campaigns around Igbo language day thrive every February — post with ị, ọ, ụ intact.
Arabi Keyboardعربي كيبورد
kactyl.com
Type Igbo from any device without installation
✓ 100% Free⚡ No Install📱 All Devices
Free Igbo Keyboard
Free Igbo Keyboard Online. Type from any device — no download, no install.
100% free·30M+ speakers, overwhelmingly in southeastern Nigeria — one of the country's three biggest languages — plus a far-flung diaspora in the UK, US and beyond that keeps Igbo alive in family chats and a very active online language-revival movement. speakers·All devices
Written Igbo settled its 'alphabet wars' only in 1961, when the Ọnwụ orthography ended decades of dispute between the colonial-era Lepsius spelling and the 1929 Adams-Ward system that communities had refused to agree on. The result is a 36-letter Latin alphabet with two signatures: dotted-under vowels (ị, ọ, ụ) and eight digraphs counted as full letters — ch, gb, gh, gw, kp, kw, nw, ny. Before Latin, the Igbo world carried meaning in Nsibidi, an indigenous ideographic system of the Cross River region whose symbols inspired art, secret societies — and lately, global pop culture.
One syllable, four words: ákwá (cry), àkwà (bed), ákwà (cloth), àkwá (egg) — Igbo tones flip meaning completely, and vowel harmony splits the vowels into two teams (a·ị·ọ·ụ vs e·i·o·u) that rarely mix inside a word.
Nigeria runs on WhatsApp, and Igbo family and hometown-association groups run with it — from Onitsha to London to Houston. An energetic online revival movement (spurred by UNESCO-fueled fears about the language's future) pushes young Igbos to type in real orthography with the dots in place; Igbo rap and highlife (Phyno, Flavour) put the language on every feed, and Nollywood's Igbo productions keep it on screens. The cultural engine behind typed Igbo is enormous: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — translated into 60+ languages — made Igbo life world literature, Nollywood's Igbo-language productions and highlife stars keep the language on screens and speakers, and the famed igba-boi apprenticeship networks tie Igbo commerce together across Lagos, Onitsha and the diaspora through daily WhatsApp coordination. Google adding Igbo to Translate and Gboard acknowledged what town unions from Houston to Peckham already knew: the language's written life is moving online, dots and all. February's UNESCO Mother Language Day has become an annual Igbo-typing moment, with campaigns pushing feeds full of correctly dotted posts.
1. Open kactyl.com/igbo/→2. Click letters→3. Copy→4. Paste anywhere
Igbo writes with 36 letters, two teams of vowels and a tone system where the same spelling can be cry, bed, cloth or egg — until the marks tell you which.
Four everyday words share one spelling — ákwá (cry), àkwà (bed), ákwà (cloth), àkwá (egg) — separated only by tone. Formal Igbo marks them with acute and grave accents; this keyboard places tone marks on any vowel, dotted ones included.
ákwá — cry · àkwá — egg
The dotted vowels
ị, ọ, ụ — half the vocabulary
ịọụ
The dots below aren’t decoration: ọ and o are different vowels making different words (ọkụ — fire; oku — a call). Vowel harmony splits Igbo’s vowels into two teams that rarely mix inside a word — so the dotted three carry half the language.
ụlọ — house · ọkụ — fire
Letters made of two
gb, kp, nw, ny — one key each
gbkpnw
Eight digraphs are full letters of the Ọnwụ alphabet — and gb and kp are doubly-articulated stops, released by lips and tongue at once, sounds European alphabets never wrote: gbaa (play), kpọọ (call), nwanne (sibling).
nwanne — sibling · kpọọ — call
The peace treaty
1961 — the alphabet wars end
1961
Missionary Lepsius spelling versus the 1929 Adams-Ward reform split Igbo publishing for three decades — two camps, one language, different books. The 1961 Ọnwụ orthography was the compromise that stuck: today’s 36 letters, dots and all, taught in every school.
Ọnwụ — the standard since 1961
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about the Igbo keyboard
They have their own keys — that's the point of an Igbo keyboard. The dots below aren't decoration: ọ and o are different vowels making different words (ọkụ — fire; oku — a call). English keyboards can't produce them at all, which is why so much online Igbo is written 'undotted' and ambiguous. Type with the dots and your Igbo reads the way the Ọnwụ standard intends.
Igbo vowels come in two teams: a, ị, ọ, ụ in one and e, i, o, u in the other — and a word's vowels stay on one team. So you get ụlọ (house) with both vowels dotted, and isi (head) with both plain, but almost never a mix. It's why the dotted vowels aren't optional extras: half the vocabulary is spelled with them, and the keyboard keeps both teams one row apart.
Because tone is part of the word: ákwá is cry/weeping, àkwà is bed or bridge, ákwà is cloth, and àkwá is egg. Speech carries the melody, and formal writing marks it with acute (´) and grave (`) accents when confusion is possible. This keyboard can place tone marks on any vowel — dotted ones included — which almost no phone keyboard manages.
No — everyday Igbo mostly leaves tones unmarked and lets context decide, exactly like most Yoruba and Hausa writing. But dictionaries, learning materials, Bibles and any sentence where ambiguity bites (akwa!) use them. The practical rule: write the dots below always; add tone marks when a reader could stumble. This keyboard supports both layers.
Yes — eight digraphs are full members of the 36-letter alphabet: ch, gb, gh, gw, kp, kw, nw, ny. Two of them, gb and kp, are doubly-articulated stops — both lips and the back of the tongue release at once — sounds West African languages own and European alphabets never wrote. They open everyday words: gbaa (kick/play), kpọọ (call), nwanne (sibling). Each digraph is a single key here.
Nsibidi is the indigenous ideographic system of the Cross River region — symbols for concepts, used in art, textiles and the records of traditional societies, centuries before Latin letters arrived. It isn't how modern Igbo is written (this keyboard types the 1961 Ọnwụ Latin standard), but its aesthetic legacy is everywhere — including Hollywood: Black Panther's Wakandan script drew on Nsibidi.
The peace treaty of Igbo spelling. Early missionaries wrote Igbo with Lepsius letters; a 1929 reform (Adams-Ward) introduced new characters that churches and publishers split over for thirty years — two camps printing the same language differently. The Ọnwụ committee's 1961 compromise standardized today's 36 letters, dots and all, and it's what schools, publishers and this keyboard use.
ṅ — the n with a dot above — marks the velar 'ng' sound where spelling needs it explicit, as in aṅụ (bee) and ọṅụ (joy). It has its own key here alongside the digraph letters nw and ny. Like the dotted vowels, it's part of what separates real written Igbo from an English-keyboard approximation.
Type here with full dots and (when needed) tone marks, tap Copy, paste into WhatsApp — Nigeria's default messenger. It renders on every phone, in the hometown-association group and the family chat alike, with no installation on either end. Works the same on WhatsApp Web, where most office computers have no Igbo input at all.
Yes — kactyl.com/igbo/ runs in any browser: tap the letters, copy, paste anywhere. Add to Home Screen for one-tap access. Once loaded, the typing keeps working offline — useful on patchy data.
Yes — it's standard Unicode, so ị, ọ, ụ, ṅ and tone-marked vowels paste correctly into Word, Docs, Excel and email, and they print exactly as shown. That matters for church programmes, school materials and the growing body of Igbo-language publishing.
UNESCO listed Igbo among languages at risk years ago, and the warning galvanized a revival: Igbo-language podcasts, YouTube teaching channels, spelling-bee culture and a norm of typing with correct dots. 30M+ speakers is a big base — the concern is intergenerational transmission in cities and abroad. Tools that make proper written Igbo effortless are part of the answer, which is exactly what this page is for.
Inter — chosen for complete, clean rendering of Igbo's extended Latin: the under-dot vowels, ṅ, and stacked tone marks (like ị́) display clearly at every size. Copied text is font-free Unicode and takes on each app's own typeface.
Diaspora families typing to Nigeria from UK and US devices with no Igbo layout; students and teachers preparing materials with correct dots and tones; church and hometown-association secretaries on office computers; and revival-minded young Igbos who insist on ị, ọ, ụ instead of the flat i, o, u. One tab, correct orthography, nothing installed.
Kedu (how are you), ndewo (hello), daalụ (thank you — with the dotted ụ), ututu ọma (good morning): all sit in the predictions after a letter or two, and all type cleanly from the keys. Note how many greetings need the dots — daalụ and ututu ọma are misspelled without them — which is exactly why an English keyboard can't do polite Igbo.
Igbo names are sentences — Chukwuemeka ('God has done much'), Ngọzi ('blessing'), Chiọma ('good God'), Ifeanyị — and half of them carry dotted vowels that Western systems strip away. On official documents abroad the dots often vanish; in your own posts, invitations and family chats they don't have to. Type the name here with its real spelling and paste it anywhere.
Igbo spans a rich dialect continuum — Onitsha, Owerri, Ngwa, Nsukka and more — and what schools and books use is Standard Igbo (Igbo Izugbe), built historically around Central Igbo varieties. The Ọnwụ alphabet covers all of them: the 36 letters write any dialect, and this keyboard doesn't force vocabulary — type your own Igbo, standard or hometown.
Igbo counts in a mix of native numerals — otu, abụọ, atọ, anọ, ise (1–5), iri (10), narị (100), puku (1,000) — and everyday Nigerian usage freely switches to English digits for phone numbers and prices. Both work here: the native words type with their dotted vowels intact (abụọ, anọ), and the number row handles the digits.
Nwa — child/offspring — is one of Igbo's great building blocks: nwanne (sibling, 'mother's child'), nwoke (man), nwaanyị (woman), nwata (young person), and countless names (Nwachukwu, Nwamaka). It starts with the digraph letter nw, which has its own key here — one more reason two-letter keys matter in Igbo.
Yes — this is one of the heaviest real uses: parish bulletins, hymn sheets (Igbo hymnals are dot-perfect), town-union minutes and burial programmes all demand correct orthography. Everything here is standard Unicode, so it pastes into Word and prints exactly as typed — ị, ọ, ụ, ṅ and tone marks included.
You're the keyboard's main audience: heritage speakers who got the language by ear. Start from sound — phonetic instincts mostly work because Ọnwụ spelling is regular — then let two rules carry you: match vowels within a word to one harmony team, and reach for ị, ọ, ụ whenever the vowel feels 'heavier' than i, o, u. The predictions correct toward standard spelling as you type, which quietly teaches it.
Anything printed before 1961 may use the earlier orthographies — Lepsius-era spellings or the 1929 Adams-Ward letters — from the decades when Igbo publishing was split between systems. Bibles and hymnals were reprinted across the transition, so families own books in both. What you type here is the modern Ọnwụ standard, the one schools teach and modern publishers use.
Ilu — proverbs — are Igbo's crown jewels ('proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten', as Achebe put it), and they deserve correct dots and tones: onye aghala nwanne ya (may no one abandon their sibling), egbe bere ugo bere (let the kite perch, let the eagle perch). Type them here with the digraph keys and dotted vowels, and paste them into the family group, a wedding programme or a caption — spelled the way elders would approve.
The Ọnwụ alphabet runs: a b ch d e f g gb gh gw h i ị j k kp kw l m n ṅ nw ny o ọ p r s sh t u ụ v w y z — 36 letters with the digraphs and dotted letters filed as full members in their own positions. It's the order dictionaries and school primers use, so knowing it means finding words — and it's why this keyboard lays out digraphs as single keys rather than letter pairs.
Yes, more than people expect: daalụ and daalu are different strings to a search engine, as are ọkụ and oku. Undotted Igbo — the default output of English keyboards — fragments the language online: content typed with correct ị, ọ, ụ is findable by people searching correctly, and vice versa. Typing dotted isn't just orthographic pride; it's how written Igbo accumulates weight on the internet.
Amazigh
Kurdish
Uyghur
