Akshar in a few sentences.
A keyboard for 21 Indian languages. On-device AI, encrypted iCloud sync, no servers, no ads.
Why now
India has roughly 1.4 billion people, and most of them prefer to read in their own script - not in romanised English. iPhone has been a flagship device in India for over a decade, yet typing in Hindi, Tamil, Bangla, or any of the country's other written languages still feels like a second-class experience. The built-in keyboards are limited; the popular third-party options are dated, ad-supported, or share data. Akshar is a one-developer answer: a modern, on-device, ad-free Indic keyboard built specifically for iOS.
Quick facts
- NameAkshar: Indic Keyboard
- MakerKrishna Permi (independent)
- HeadquartersIndia
- PlatformiPhone, iPad (iOS 18 and later)
- PriceFree forever. No subscriptions, no in-app purchases, no premium tier.
- Languages21 Indic, plus English
- Latest version3.0
- App Storeapps.apple.com/app/id6759032352
- Websiteakshar.site
Boilerplate
Three lengths, ready to paste.
Akshar is a free iOS keyboard that lets you type in 21 Indian languages, with all transliteration running on the device and nothing sent to a server.
Akshar is a free iPhone and iPad keyboard for 21 Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Bangla, Marathi, Telugu, and Urdu. Type the way a word sounds in English and the keyboard offers it in your chosen script. A built-in Convert tool transliterates whole paragraphs both ways - English to Indic, and Indic back to Romanised English. Notes can be shared as artwork posters. Everything runs on the device; no keystrokes leave the iPhone. Made by one independent developer in India.
Akshar is an iOS keyboard built for India's many languages. It supports 21 Indic languages, from Hindi and Tamil to less commonly written ones like Bodo, Maithili, and Meitei. Users type words the way they sound in English and the keyboard suggests them in the chosen script, drawing from an open neural model from IIT Madras (AI4Bharat IndicXlit) packaged for Apple Core ML and run on-device. A separate Convert tab lets users paste a whole paragraph in either direction - English to Indic, or Indic back to Romanised English - and a Notes view turns any saved text into a sharable artwork poster with the script's own colour palette. Everything happens on the device. No keystrokes are sent to a server, no analytics SDK is bundled, and the only cloud sync available is the user's own iCloud, which Apple encrypts in transit and at rest. Akshar is free, ad-free, and made by one developer, Krishna Permi, working in India.
What's distinctive
- Bidirectional Convert tool. The Akshar app has a dedicated Convert tab. Paste a paragraph in either direction - English to Indic, or Indic back to Romanised English - and tap once. The reverse direction (Indic to English) is uncommon among Indic-language apps on iOS. Runs on-device in under 30 ms.
- Share as Artwork. Any note can be exported as an image with the script's accent colour and a native font. A built-in poster generator, designed to drop straight into WhatsApp, Instagram Stories, or any chat.
- Fully on-device. Both the keyboard extension and the Convert tool use the same on-device transliteration model. No analytics SDK, no telemetry, no third-party trackers. The only network call the app makes is to the user's own iCloud, if they enable sync. Text never leaves the phone, which matters when the text is a personal message in your mother tongue.
How it compares
Akshar exists because the alternatives don't quite fit how Indians actually type. The trade-offs:
- Apple's built-in keyboard. Supports 11 Indian languages, but only pairs two Indian languages with English at a time. Some languages - Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Urdu - require a separate keyboard added entirely.
- Gboard. Indic transliteration is buried; language switching feels clunky. The keyboard is feature-heavy, and English autocorrect, Hinglish predictions, and Indic transliteration sometimes fight each other in the suggestion bar.
- Other third-party Indic keyboards. Most are dated visually, often capped at 10-13 languages, frequently include ads or paywalls for basic features, and several show data-collection or cross-app tracking on their App Store privacy labels.
- Akshar. 21 languages in a single keyboard, one tap to switch between them, modern iOS-native design, no ads, no paywall, no analytics, transliteration runs on the device.
Quotable
Pre-written quotes from the maker, free to lift directly. No need to email back for one.
"Most Indic keyboards on iOS feel like they were ported from Android in 2015. I wanted one that felt like it belonged on iOS in 2026."
"The model runs on the device because that's where it should run. A keyboard sees every word you type, in every app. That kind of reach can't go to a server."
"Twenty-one languages in one keyboard isn't because it's hard to add more. It's where the spoken-Indian-language curve flattens out. Beyond Bodo and Meitei you're into territory that needs a community-led project, not one developer."
News coverage
30 May 2026
How a father’s solution to son’s Kannada homework became free keyboard app for 21 Indian languages
The original article. Bijin Jose writes about how Akshar began: a Bengaluru developer trying to help his son with Kannada homework, who couldn’t type Kannada comfortably on his iPhone.
The piece follows the path from Google Input Tools in a browser, to a native iPhone wrapper used at home for about a year, to the App Store privacy review showing that every transliteration query was still going to an external server.
That led to a rebuild around AI4Bharat’s IndicXlit model, running entirely on-device. The article notes the result is free on the App Store, requires no internet, and collects no user data.
7 Jun 2026 · Online + Print
Long Q&A interview by Mathures Paul. Published online on telegraphindia.com/t2 and in print across the Calcutta, North Bengal and South Bengal editions on 7 June.
Covers whether typing will be replaced by voice and AI agents. The answer settles on three reasons typing stays - control over your exact words, writing in your own script as cultural agency, and the meaning of the name “Akshar” itself: the Sanskrit root for imperishable, indestructible.
Goes into how the keyboard handles slang and out-of-vocabulary words (one letter at a time, a per-language frequency layer, a hand-curated correction list), and how the model works word-by-word with two layers of softer context on the phone.
The most useful section for outsiders is on why bigger companies skip languages like Bodo, Meitei, Konkani, Sindhi, Sinhala, Maithili, Kashmiri and Assamese. Three reasons: speaker counts below the business bar, training data scarcity until AI4Bharat’s Aksharantar dataset opened up 26 million word pairs across 21 languages, and the self-reinforcing gap that indie developers can break by shipping support before the demand becomes “obvious” on a spreadsheet.
Closes on the keyboard-as-trust point. The AI models ship inside the app, transliteration happens on-device with Apple’s Core ML, the App Store privacy label says ‘Data Not Collected’, and users can verify via Apple’s App Privacy Report in Settings.
7 Jun 2026
Krishna Permi’s Akshar could be the iPhone keyboard Indian language users have been waiting for
The same Mathures Paul interview, re-published on t2online.in under Tech > Interviews on the same morning. Headline is the more punchy version - that for Indian-language users on iPhone, Akshar might finally be the keyboard they have been waiting for.
4 Jun 2026 · National print
The small keyboard with a big mission
Bijin Jose’s print piece for the Financial Express. Page 9 of the 4 June edition, ran in all ten city editions - Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Chandigarh and Kochi.
Covers the same path as the online story: Google Input Tools, the privacy review, the move to AI4Bharat’s IndicXlit, and the quantisation work to fit the model inside Apple’s keyboard extension memory limits.
Adds a section on users: a Maharashtra-based user who writes to customers in Marathi, and second-generation Indians in the US who said it has made typing in their native languages easier.
Ends on the point that open-source language models can make technology both more inclusive and more private.
Jun 2026
Short Telugu news video. Opens with the father-son angle and walks through the same story: a Bengaluru developer helping his son practise Kannada at home, the difficulty of typing it on iPhone, and the keyboard that came out of it.
Akshar supports Telugu among its 21 scripts. The video notes that an independent developer is covering languages the bigger keyboards don’t.
Jun 2026
Oneindia Kannada’s piece on Akshar - Bengaluru techie, his son’s homework, free privacy-focused iOS app for 21 Indian languages. Sits in their Bengaluru news section.
Covers the same details as the other Kannada coverage: the personal start at home, AI4Bharat’s IndicXlit doing the transliteration on-device, free on the App Store.
1 Jun 2026
Aman Gupta and Tarunya Sanjay’s long-form Mint piece. Opens on the father trying to help his son finish Kannada homework, and how that became Akshar.
Includes Krishna’s quote about wanting a simple app for the practice work he was doing with his son, and his discomfort with not having any control over what users were sending to Google. The piece also carries his reasoning that the keyboard had to work without an internet connection because users include children learning their first words and adults typing OTPs and credit-card details.
There’s a section on the name. Krishna told Mint he thinks of himself first as a writer, and that his father introduced him to language and writing at a young age. He also says “Akshar” means imperishable, indestructible.
Mint lists the 21 supported scripts - Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Bodo, Dogri, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Manipuri, Sanskrit, Sindhi and more - and notes the keyboard’s UI itself can be set to all 11 Indian languages Apple currently supports.
31 May 2026
Udbhav Tripathi’s Hindi piece. Same path from a Kannada homework session at home to a free iPhone keyboard for 21 Indian languages.
Walks through Google Input Tools needing the internet, the App Store privacy review showing keystrokes were still leaving the device, and the technical detail that the iPhone keyboard extension memory budget is 50 to 75 MB while IndicXlit was around 350 MB - which is why quantisation was needed.
Closes on the languages Akshar supports that Gboard and Apple’s keyboard don’t fully cover: Kashmiri, Konkani, Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, Manipuri, Sanskrit and Sindhi.
31 May 2026
Vartha Bharati’s Kannada piece. Bengaluru developer who needed to type Kannada for his son’s reading practice at home, and the keyboard that came out of it.
Mentions growing up in northern Karnataka reading and writing Kannada by hand, and the difficulty of typing it on iPhone. Same path as the English coverage: Google Input Tools needing the internet, the App Store privacy review showing transliteration queries were leaving the device, the move to AI4Bharat’s IndicXlit (Apache-licensed).
Notes the keyboard-as-trust point: people type passwords, OTPs and card numbers on a keyboard, so where that data goes matters. Includes the iOS keyboard extension memory budget of 50 to 75 MB against a 350 MB model, with quantisation as the technique that closed the gap.
Ends on the language coverage: Apple’s default keyboard supports 11 Indian languages; Akshar covers 21, including Kashmiri, Konkani, Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, Manipuri, Sanskrit and Sindhi.
21 May 2026
Akshar 3.0 Debuts: Free iPhone Keyboard Expands Odia, Indian Language Typing with On-Device AI
Launch coverage of Akshar 3.0. Free iPhone keyboard, on-device transliteration, 21 Indian languages.
Walks through the input flow: type in Roman letters, the text converts to scripts including Odia, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi and Assamese, among others.
AI4Bharat’s IndicXlit does the transliteration locally. The article mentions the on-device design for privacy and lower latency, and highlights Odia given how few accessible typing options exist for it.
21 May 2026
Bengaluru developer builds AI-powered Kannada keyboard for iPhone users
News Karnataka’s launch coverage. Akshar described as an AI-powered iPhone and iPad keyboard supporting Kannada and 20 other Indian languages offline.
Notes that Akshar runs entirely on-device using AI4Bharat’s IndicXlit model (IIT Madras), rather than the cloud processing most transliteration tools use.
Highlights the Kannada and Konkani angle for readers in Karnataka and the coastal regions.
Case study
KeyboardKit case study
Akshar - Indic Transliteration Keyboard
KeyboardKit, the Swift SDK that Akshar’s keyboard is built on, published a long case study covering how Akshar uses the library, what was built on top of it, and what KeyboardKit’s role was in shipping the keyboard.
The piece walks through Akshar end to end - the keyboard with its script selector row above the keys, the Notes tab for longer writing, the Convert tab that goes both ways, Share as Artwork, widgets for the Lock Screen and Home Screen, three Control Centre tiles, and Siri and Shortcuts integration through App Intents.
It also includes Krishna’s own quote on the origin: wanting to type Kannada to his son comfortably for reading and practice at home, and not finding a mobile app that made transliteration feel natural - so he built one.
On the SDK collaboration, Krishna is quoted twice. KeyboardKit was “essential to the project,” he says, and the library let him ship v1 in months instead of years - and the v3 version, with 21 languages, widgets, App Intents, Convert, and Share as Artwork, would not have been feasible in a reasonable timeframe without KeyboardKit.
Brand assets
Right-click and save, or tap to open. Please don't recolour, crop, or stretch the app icon.
Download press kit (ZIP, ~3 MB)
Sample shots, in script
Five screenshots that show the keyboard and tools rendering live in different Indic scripts. Visual proof of the multi-language claim.
FAQ for journalists
The questions that come up most often. Answers are quotable.
How is Akshar different from Gboard?
Akshar is iOS-only and built native for it. Indic transliteration is the default mode, not a hidden setting. The suggestion bar shows only the relevant scripts; English autocorrect doesn't fight with Hinglish predictions. The model runs on-device. There are no ads, no analytics, and no Google account.
Where does the model come from?
The transliteration model is IndicXlit from AI4Bharat (IIT Madras), packaged for Apple Core ML and run on-device. It's an open neural model, bundled as-is. No proprietary wrapper, no fine-tuning tricks.
What data does Akshar collect?
None. Akshar's App Store privacy label shows zero data collection. There are no analytics SDKs, no telemetry, no third-party trackers. The only network call is to the user's own iCloud, if they enable sync. Keystrokes never leave the device.
Can I get a custom asset, screenshot, or interview?
Yes. Use the press contact form below. Typical response under 48 hours.
About the maker
Akshar is designed and built by Krishna Permi, an independent developer based in India. It started as a side project to help his child type Kannada homework after school. The keyboards on the App Store never quite felt designed for the way Indians actually type, so he wrote one. Akshar grew from there into a keyboard for 21 Indian languages.
Krishna writes about indie iOS, design, and the small details of building software at krishnapermi.net, and is on Mastodon as @krishna@mastodon.social.
Get in touch
For interviews, press inquiries, or extra assets, write to the maker directly.
Typical response time: under 48 hours, often the same day.