All 44 Pashto letters — the ring letters ټ ډ ړ ڼ, both dialect letters ښ ږ, and all five yeh forms — no install, any device.
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# Special Characters
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Ready-Made Pashto Combos
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How To Use
Three steps. Ten seconds.
Type
Use the full Pashto layout — all four ring letters (ټ ډ ړ ڼ), ښ ږ ځ څ and the five yeh forms have their own keys — or type phonetically and let the keyboard choose.
1
Copy
One tap copies genuine Pashto Unicode — no ت-for-ټ substitutions that make your words look like Urdu.
2
Paste
Paste into Facebook posts, WhatsApp groups or TikTok comments — it reads correctly in Kabul, Peshawar, or the diaspora.
3
Pashto Keyboard for Any App
Compose your Pashto above, copy once, and it pastes cleanly into the platforms Pashtuns live on.Copy → paste into any app. No special settings needed.
Snapchat
Snapchat stories in Pashto stay readable when pasted from here — every ring letter intact instead of an Urdu look-alike.
WhatsApp
Diaspora WhatsApp groups stretch from Kabul to Hamburg — paste Pashto that renders identically for every relative in the chat.
Instagram
Pashto Instagram is where landay couplets circulate — paste verses with ۍ and ې exactly where the poem needs them.
TikTok
Pashto TikTok grew fast after 2021 — paste captions that read correctly in Peshawar, Kandahar and every resettled community.
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Pashto's written tradition was formalized in the 16th century, when Bayazid Pir Roshan, founder of the Roshani movement, devised an augmented Arabic alphabet for the sounds Arabic couldn't write and used it for his Khayr al-Bayan; a century later the warrior-poet Khushal Khan Khattak (1613–1689) turned Pashto into a full literary language. The modern alphabet of roughly 44 letters stacks three layers: Arabic's base, Persian's additions (پ چ ژ گ), and Pashto's own inventions — four retroflex letters marked with a small ring (ټ ډ ړ ڼ), the affricates ځ and څ, the dialect-defining ښ and ږ, and five distinct forms of yeh. Pashto became an official language of Afghanistan by royal decree in 1936, alongside Dari.
Pashto has five different yeh letters — ی ې ي ۍ ئ — each with its own grammatical job, and four retroflex letters (ټ ډ ړ ڼ) marked with a small ring that exist in no Arabic, Persian or Urdu layout. That's why Pashtuns typing on borrowed keyboards constantly substitute look-alikes — ت for ټ, a plain ی for ۍ — producing text every native reader spots as wrong. Two letters, ښ and ږ, are even pronounced differently in Kandahar and Peshawar while being spelled identically: the script is the thing that unites the dialects. This keyboard gives every one of those letters its own key.
Pashto's online life runs through Facebook — the dominant platform on both sides of the Durand Line, from Kabul to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — and through WhatsApp groups that hold together a diaspora that grew sharply after 2021, when resettlement scattered Pashto speakers across Germany, the UK, the US and beyond. Much of the daily traffic is poetry: landay couplets and tapey verses circulate as posts and statuses, and getting the five yeh forms right matters when you're quoting them. The typical frustration this page solves: a phone with only an Urdu or Arabic keyboard, where ټ ډ ړ ڼ ښ ږ ځ څ simply don't exist — so people either misspell Pashto or give up and write in another language.
1. Open kactyl.com/pashto/→2. Click letters→3. Copy→4. Paste anywhere
Pashto took Arabic’s 28 letters, added Persian’s four, then invented ten more of its own — including five different yehs and letters that change sound by region without changing spelling.
44 letters5 yeh forms4 ring letters2 dialect letters
The five-way split
One sound family, five yehs
یېيۍئ
Where Arabic has one yeh, Pashto has five — each with a grammatical job: plain ی, soft ې, hard ي, the feminine ۍ, and the verbal ئ. Choosing the wrong one changes the grammar, so all five get keys.
ډوډۍ — bread · کوې — you do
The ring letters
Retroflexes marked with a circle
ټډړڼ
Pashto’s panḍak ring marks its retroflex sounds: ټول (all), ماڼۍ (palace). Different codepoints from Urdu’s look-alikes — type them right and your Pashto stops looking borrowed.
ټول — all · ماڼۍ — palace
The dialect pair
ښ ږ — spelled once, said twice
ښږ
In Kandahar, ښ sounds like a retroflex “sh”; in Peshawar, like “kh” — yet پښتو is spelled identically everywhere. Two letters quietly holding a dialect continuum together in one written standard.
پښتو — one spelling, every dialect
The Pashto affricates
ځ and څ — dz and ts
ځڅ
ځان (self) and څو (how many) open with sounds Arabic, Persian and Urdu simply don’t write. Pir Roshan’s 16th-century additions, still exclusive to Pashto’s alphabet today.
ځوان — young · څلور — four
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about the Pashto keyboard
Each has a distinct job: ی (naram ya) for the common "ay" sound, ې (pasta ya) for "e", ي (klaka ya) for hard "ee", ۍ (tail ya) for the feminine ending as in ډوډۍ ("bread"), and ئ (hamza ya) for second-person verb endings. All five have separate keys here — a single ی key, like Arabic keyboards offer, can't write correct Pashto.
These are Pashto's retroflex consonants, marked with a small circle (panḍak). They are their own Unicode letters — ټ is U+067C, not the Urdu ٹ (U+0679) and not ت. Each has a dedicated key. If you've been typing ت instead of ټ, words like ټول ("all") have been rendering wrong for your readers.
They're the famous dialect letters: ښ is a retroflex "sh" in Kandahari but "kh" in Peshawari; ږ is retroflex "zh" in the south but "g" in the north. The spelling never changes — پښتو is written identically everywhere — which is exactly why the script holds the dialects together. One keyboard covers all Pashto.
The affricates ځ (dz) and څ (ts) — as in ځان ("self") and څو ("how many") — sit on their own keys. They exist only in Pashto's extended alphabet, so Arabic, Persian and Urdu keyboards have no way to produce them at all.
No — and this is the most common source of broken Pashto online. Urdu's retroflexes (ٹ ڈ ڑ) are different Unicode letters from Pashto's ring letters (ټ ډ ړ), and Urdu has nothing for ڼ ښ ږ ځ څ or the yeh forms ې and ۍ. Text typed that way looks subtly wrong to every Pashtun and confuses search engines about the language.
Pashto includes all of Persian's letters (پ چ ژ گ included) and then adds ten of its own on top: the four ring retroflexes, ځ څ ښ ږ, plus ڼ and the extra yeh forms. Dari speakers can read most Pashto letters; a Dari keyboard still can't write Pashto.
ۍ (tail ya) marks feminine nouns and adjectives — ډوډۍ ("bread"), نجلۍ ("girl"). It only appears at the end of words and is never interchangeable with plain ی: swap them and you've changed the grammar, not just the look.
The Persian-style Eastern Arabic digits ۰۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹ — with ۴, ۵ and ۶ in their Persian forms, the same convention Afghanistan uses officially. The number row outputs these directly.
The alphabet is the same on both sides; only minor spelling conventions differ (some words' yeh choices and loanword spellings). Text typed here is standard Pashto Unicode, readable identically in Kandahar, Jalalabad, Peshawar or Quetta.
Yes — that's half of what Pashto social media is. Landay couplets live on exact vowels: مینه ("love") needs ه, ليلا needs ي. With every yeh form and retroflex on its own key, quoted verses keep their traditional spelling instead of the approximations borrowed keyboards force.
That's a font problem, not your text. Pashto letters join cursively like Arabic; if a site's font lacks Pashto's extended letters, you see boxes or disconnected shapes. Text from this keyboard is standard Unicode — it renders correctly wherever a proper Pashto-capable font exists, which includes all major platforms.
Yes. Facebook is Pashto's biggest platform and WhatsApp its diaspora lifeline — both fully support Unicode Pashto. Type, copy, paste: posts, comments, statuses and group messages all render correctly on iPhone, Android and desktop.
Pashto flows right-to-left and embedded English words stay left-to-right — the keyboard outputs proper bidirectional Unicode, so chat apps arrange mixed messages correctly on their own, the way Pashtun group chats naturally switch between languages.
No — they're different languages entirely. Dari (Afghan Persian) is an Iranian language mutually intelligible with Farsi; Pashto is its own branch with different grammar and ten letters Persian lacks. Afghanistan uses both officially, which is why many Afghans type both — there's a separate Persian keyboard on this site for Dari/Farsi.
ڼ is the retroflex n — as in ماڼۍ ("palace") — with its own key and codepoint (U+06BC). It never starts a word but is common in the middle and end. Substituting plain ن changes real words, so the keyboard keeps ڼ visible on the main layer rather than hiding it behind a long-press.
The oldest undisputed Pashto book is Bayazid Pir Roshan’s Khayr al-Bayan from the 16th century, written in his newly augmented alphabet. A more romantic candidate — Pata Khazana, an anthology claiming Pashto poetry back to the 8th century — surfaced in 1944, but scholars still debate its authenticity. Either way, the alphabet you’re typing with carries at least five centuries of continuous literature.
Arabic writes 28 letters, Persian stretched it to 32, and Pashto pushed to roughly 44 because its sound system is simply bigger: retroflex consonants (ټول — “all”), unique affricates (ځوان — “young”), the dialect pair ښ ږ (ښار — “city”), and a five-way yeh distinction no neighbor makes. Each historical layer added keys this keyboard now gives you in one layout.
Everyday Pashto is written without diacritics — the letters ا و ي ې ۍ carry most vowel information, and readers infer the rest from context, as in Urdu and Persian. Diacritics appear mainly in dictionaries, teaching material and Quranic quotations, so the keyboard keeps them available but out of your way.
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