MacOS: New Arabic Keyboard Layout

Thanks to Farid Alkorashy, there is a new Arabic keyboard for MacOS for those who need or prefer the Windows Arabic layout. Unlike Apple's "Arabic PC" input source, it puts Arabic numbers (instead of the Hindu form) on the top level, so there is no need to use Caps Lock to access them. You can download it here.

iOS 17: New Language Features

Apple's preview of iOS 17 indicates the following new language features:

QuickPath support added for Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, Polish, and Romanian keyboards.

Predictive text added for Hebrew, Polish, and Romanian keyboards.

Multilingual typing support added for Polish, Romanian, and Turkish keyboards.

New keyboard layouts: Akan, Chuvash, Hausa, Hmong (Pahawh), Ingush, Kabyle, Liangshan Yi, Mandaic, Mi’kmaw, N’Ko, Osage, Rejang, Tamazight (Standard Moroccan), Wancho, Wolastoqey, and Yoruba.

New transliteration keyboards: Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu

Japanese handwriting keyboard.

Expanded bilingual Siri for Indian languages: Siri for English (India) understands more requests that mix English with any of nine different Indian languages.

New dictionaries: Bulgarian, Catalan, English-Greek, English-Malay, English-Swedish, Greek, Malay, Polish, Punjabi, and Romanian.

New term of address languages: German and European Portuguese.

Vertical Live Text recognition. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Vertical text support for Chinese and Japanese in apps like Contact Posters, Photos Memories, and Calendar widgets.

Arabic kashida support in apps like Contact Posters, Photos Memories, and Calendar widgets.

New Translation languages: Ukrainian.

As far as I can tell, there are no new system or spellcheck languages.

MacOS 14 Sonoma: New Language Features

Apple's Preview of MacOS 14 Sonoma released 9/12/23 indicates the following new language features:

Predictive text added for Hebrew, Polish, and Romanian keyboards.

New keyboard layouts: Chuvash, Hmong (Pahawh), Ingush, Kabyle, Mandaic, Mi’kmaw, N’Ko, Osage, Rejang, Tamazight (Standard Moroccan), Wancho, and Wolastoqey

New transliteration keyboards: Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu

New dictionaries: Bulgarian, Catalan, English-Greek, English-Malay, English-Swedish, Greek, Malay, Polish, Punjabi, and Romanian.

New term of address languages: German and European Portuguese.

Vertical Live Text recognition: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean

Expanded bilingual Siri for Indian languages: Siri for English (India) understands more requests that mix English with any of nine different Indian languages.

New Translation language: Ukrainian

As far as I can tell, there are no new system or spellcheck languages.

MacOS Ventura Update 13.3 Has New Keyboards

Apple's recent MacOS update 13.3 includes the following new language features:

+Transliteration support for Gujarati, Punjabi, and Urdu keyboards

+New keyboard layouts for Choctaw, Chickasaw, Akan, Hausa, and Yoruba

Although not mentioned in the release notes, this update also fixes a bug dating from MacOS 12 in the Unicode Hex input source which made certain characters unavailable.

Typing Sanskrit

While MacOS comes with a Sanskrit Devanagari keyboard, this lacks a number of characters that users of this language may require, including special symbols and Vedic accents and cantillation marks. If you need those, check out the Keyman app and its Vedic Sanskrit Devanagari Phonetic Keyboard.

This keyboard is also available for iOS and browser use.

If you need to type transliterated Sanskrit in Latin Script, Apple's ABC Extended Input Source is probably the best choice.