Launched this week
IPAbet
A better keyboard for the International Phonetic Alphabet
6 followers
A better keyboard for the International Phonetic Alphabet
6 followers
IPAbet is a fast and memorable keyboard for typing the International Phonetic Alphabet, directly in any app. IPA symbols are created with familiar spellings (sH → ʃ), and every symbol is either one or two keystrokes. Free, open source, offline — native on macOS, or type in any browser.
I spent about two weeks designing and iterating on a new input method for typing the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This project started as a question: what if you could type English digraphs like ⟨sh⟩ and ⟨ng⟩ and get their IPA symbols as Unicode /ʃ/ and /ŋ/? The result is a transformation system similar to Korean input methods, where you type shifted letters to create IPA letters (s⇧H → ʃ).
The keyboard is rigorous, and includes every base IPA symbol, plus mappings for all of IPA’s diacritics and the symbols for length, stress, and tone. The website includes a typing tutorial and a place to try the keyboard without having to install.
Having used this on macOS for a few weeks, the only thing I keep wishing for is a way to customize the spellings. A few of the defaults clash with words I actually type, so a simple remap UI or a config file would make it perfect.
Finally a clean way to type IPA without copy-pasting from random Unicode tables. The two-keystroke combos feel surprisingly natural after a few minutes.
Finally a clean way to type IPA without copying symbols from a chart every time. The sH → ʃ trick feels surprisingly natural after like two minutes of trying it.