 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Google Input Tools" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(June 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Google Input Tools | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer | |
| Initial release | July 2012; 13 years ago (2012-07) |
| Website | www |
Google Input Tools, also known asGoogle IME, is a set ofinput method editors by Google for 22 languages, includingAmharic,Arabic,Bengali,Chinese,Greek,Gujarati,Hindi,Japanese,Kannada,Malayalam,Marathi,Nepali,Persian,Punjabi,Russian,Sanskrit,Serbian,Tamil,Telugu,Tigrinya, andUrdu. It is avirtual keyboard that allows users to type in their local language text directly in any application without the hassle of copying and pasting.[1]
Available as aChromeextension, it was also available as a desktop application forMicrosoft Windows[2] until it was removed in May 2018.
Google's service forIndic languages was previously available as an online text editor, named Google Indic Transliteration. Other language transliteration capabilities were added (beyond just Indic languages) and it was renamed simplyGoogle transliteration. Later on, because of its steady rise in popularity, it was released as Google Transliteration IME for offline use in December 2009.
It works on a dictionary-based phonetic transliteration approach, which means that whatever you type in Latin characters, it matches the characters with its dictionary and transliterates them. It also gives suggestions for matching words.
Google's service for Indic languages was first launched as an online text editor, Google Indic Transliteration, designed to allow users to input text in native scripts using Latin characters. Due to the increasing demand for such tools across multiple language groups, it expanded its support to other scripts and was later renamed simply Google Transliteration. By December 2009, an offline version of this tool was made available under the name Google Transliteration IME.
For transliteration between scripts, there was, until July 2011, a separate service named Google Script Converter.
