Arabic keyboard layout for Sailfish OS 5.x - Jolla 2026
Arabic Keyboard for Sailfish OS
Adds full Arabic (العربية) on-screen keyboard support to Sailfish OS 5.x. Tested on Sailfish OS 5.2.
What's included
- All 28 Arabic letters on the main keyboard
- Long-press accents for related letterforms:
- ا → أ إ آ ٱ
- ح → ج | ه → ة | ي → ئ ى
- د → ذ | و → ؤ | ء → ئ ؤ
- Context-aware bottom row: comma key shows ، in normal text, / in URLs, @ in email fields
- Symbol view (one press): Western digits 1–0, standard punctuation, ؟ ؛
- Symbol view 2 (two presses): Arabic-Indic digits ١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩٠, full harakat diacritics (فتحة ضمة كسرة + tanwin + شدة سكون), tatweel ـ
- Hardware keyboard support: registers the ara xkb layout
Installation
Install via Storeman or pkcon install-local. No developer mode required.
After installing, go to Settings → Text input and enable العربية in the keyboard list.
The package appends its entries to qmldir and hwkbdlayouts.conf without replacing those files, so it is fully safe alongside jolla-keyboard updates. Uninstalling cleanly removes all additions.
Source code
This plugin is open source. Contributions and bug reports are welcome at github.com/open-sailfishos/arabic-keyboard-plugin.
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Application versions:
| Attachment | Size | Date |
|---|---|---|
 arabic-keyboard-plugin-1.0.0-1.noarch.rpm | 12.14 KB | 11/07/2026 - 21:43 |
Changelog:
- Initial release targeting Sailfish OS 5.x (tested on 5.2)
- All 28 Arabic letters, harakat diacritics, Arabic-Indic digits
- Arabic punctuation: ، ؟ ؛
- Hardware Bluetooth/USB keyboard support via xkb ara layout
- Idempotent install/uninstall scriptlets (no file conflicts with jolla-keyboard)
Comments
nthn
Tue, 2026/08/04 - 16:16
Permalink
Great, thanks! A few thoughts:
- Is there a reason why you've placed jim behind ha and dhal behind dal, instead of just adding them to the side? There's enough space to have everything on screen.
- You can remove the shift key from the qml so it no longer shows up (and then there's even more space for any more keys you'd like to add - you could even add the buttons to the two symbol views right on the main view, if you wanted to, or add the common diacritics).
- There was already an Arabic keyboard by Alina (based on the Persian keyboard), created many years ago: https://openrepos.net/content/alina/arabic-keyboard-layout
If a user already has that one installed and installs this one, they both show up as the same keyboard, which might lead to some issues. I think it would be a good idea to add a note to the description to tell users to first uninstall that one (if they have it installed), and then install this one, to prevent any bugs.
- Could you add the non-standard letters that are used regionally to the long-press options? Like گ or ڨ.