Hindi Font Converter
Convert Hindi between Kruti Dev, Mangal and Unicode, plus a plain guide to which one you need and why they are not the same thing.
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Kept as English (untick a word to convert it):
May be English (tick a word to keep it):
Works with text in Kruti Dev 010, 011, 012, 014, 016 and 055, which share one keyboard. From a Word file, Word’s curly quotes and dashes and the Hindi digits of Kruti Dev 055 are read too. Kruti Dev 020 has another layout: use DevLys 020 to Unicode.
Please review the output. Matra order and the common conjuncts (क्ष, त्र, ज्ञ, श्र) are handled, but rare characters in very old documents may still differ. Nothing you type is uploaded. This page converts entirely inside your browser.
How to use
- Paste your Hindi into the converter above - it starts in Kruti Dev to Unicode.
- Check which font your text is in: letters like
fgUnhmean Kruti Dev or DevLys. - Copy the result, or pick a more specific converter from the list below.
Tip:Not sure which converter you need? The first section below walks through it by what your text looks like.
Worked examples
Real phrases run through this converter, so you can compare them with your own text and see what the page does before you paste anything.
The short i sign is typed before its letter in the old font
- Kruti Dev
fgUnh Hkk"kk- Unicode / Hindi
- हिन्दी भाषा
The reph (र्) is typed after its syllable in the old font
- Kruti Dev
dk;kZy; esa deZpkjh- Unicode / Hindi
- कार्यालय में कर्मचारी
A letter with र (ra) joined underneath
- Kruti Dev
iz'u dk mRrj- Unicode / Hindi
- प्रश्न का उत्तर
Letters that join into one shape
- Kruti Dev
{ks=h; Kku- Unicode / Hindi
- क्षेत्रीय ज्ञान
A whole sentence with its full stop
- Kruti Dev
Hkkjr dh jkt/kkuh ubZ fnYyh gSA- Unicode / Hindi
- भारत की राजधानी नई दिल्ली है।
Each example comes from this converter's own rules and is checked in both directions every time the site is built. A phrase that fails the check is left out.
Good to know
- In this font the colon in a heading such as विषय: is typed with the visarga key. It converts to the visarga ः, which looks like a colon but is a different character. If a portal or a search needs a real colon, replace it.
Frequently asked questions
Which Hindi font converter do I actually need?
Is Hindi the same as Unicode?
Why does my Kruti Dev text look like gibberish?
ueksS, not नमो. The Hindi only appears when the Kruti Dev font is installed and applied. Open the same file on a machine without the font and you see the raw keystrokes. That is normal, and it is exactly what this converter translates.What is the difference between Mangal and Unicode?
Do Kruti Dev and DevLys use the same keyboard?
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
Which converter do you need?
The converter above is the one most people arrive looking for: paste Kruti Dev, get Unicode Hindi you can use anywhere. If that is not your direction, every conversion has its own page, so you pick the conversion by picking the page rather than wrestling with a dropdown.
- Kruti Dev to Unicode: an old Word file into Hindi that works on the web, in WhatsApp and on government portals.
- Unicode to Kruti Dev: Hindi you typed on a keypad back into Kruti Dev keys, for a form or template that still demands the legacy font.
- Kruti Dev to Mangal: the same Unicode output, labelled for people whose documents are set in Mangal.
- Mangal to Kruti Dev: the reverse.
- All converters: the full list, including the ones still being verified.
Hindi, Unicode and Mangal are the same thing
Text typed on a phone or on the Windows Hindi keypad is already Unicode. The characters are real Devanagari: न is stored as the letter न, and any font can draw it. Mangal is simply one such font, shipped with Windows. So "Hindi", "Unicode" and "Mangal" describe one kind of text with three names, and this site labels the boxes "Unicode / Hindi" so both audiences recognise their own word.
That is also why there is no separate "Hindi to Mangal" page. There would be nothing for it to do.
Kruti Dev and DevLys are not Hindi
A legacy font works the other way round. Kruti Dev does not store Devanagari at all. It stores ordinary English letters and punctuation, and the font file draws a Hindi glyph in place of each one. The word नमो is stored as the four characters ueksS.
Two consequences follow, and between them they explain almost every problem people bring to a converter:
- Without the font, the text is unreadable. Send a Kruti Dev document to someone who does not have Kruti Dev installed and they see the raw keystrokes. Paste it into a website and it stays gibberish forever, because a web page cannot borrow a font from your hard disk.
- Nothing can search or spell-check it. To a computer it is English nonsense. Search, sorting, screen readers and translation all fail.
Converting to Unicode fixes both permanently. That is the direction worth taking if you have a choice.
Working out which font an old document used
Open the file and look at the font name in the toolbar. That is usually the fastest answer. If the file has lost its formatting, the keystrokes themselves are a clue: Kruti Dev and DevLys 010 share almost the same layout, so fgUnh reading as हिन्दी points at one of those two. Chanakya and Shusha use genuinely different layouts and will not decode correctly with a Kruti Dev map, which is why their pages stay marked coming soon rather than returning plausible-looking rubbish.
If the text already looks like Hindi on a machine with no special fonts installed, it is Unicode and needs no conversion at all.