TonalKeys - African Language Keyboard

About

TonalKeys is a free, lightweight Chrome extension that lets you type in African native languages anywhere on the web in emails, documents, social media, messaging apps, and even Google Sheets. It is useful for tonal languages that make use of tone marks and diacritics.


18 Languages Across 5 Regions:
•West Africa: Yorùbá, Igbo, Hausa, Fula, Bambara, Twi/Akan, Ewe, Fon, Wolof, 
•East Africa: Swahili, Amharic, Tigrinya, Luganda
•North Africa: Tamazight (Berber)
•Southern Africa: Zulu, Xhosa, Shona
•Central Africa: Lingala

Each keyboard includes the correct special characters that the specific language needs. For example, Yorùbá keys includes characters like ẹ, ọ, ṣ, etc. Igbo gets ị, ọ, ụ, ṅ. Hausa gets ɓ, ɗ, ƙ, ƴ. Twi and Ewe get ɛ and ɔ. And many more.


How to Use:
After installing the extension, click the TonalKeys icon in your toolbar
Turn the toggle ON
Select your language from the list
Start typing.


How Typing Works:
Type normally with your computer keyboard as you always do. When you need a special character that isn't on your keyboard, tap it from the floating character bar that appears at the bottom-right of every page.
The bar shows the characters for whichever language you've selected
Click any character to insert it at your cursor position
Drag the bar to reposition it, or collapse/hide it when you don't need it


How to Use Compose Box (for Google Docs, Sheets, Notion, etc.):
Some apps render text on a canvas, which blocks direct character insertion. On those pages, you can use the compose box  Simple tap on the pen (✎) icon on the keyboard and type into it as you normally would, click characters from the palette when you need them, then hit Copy All and paste with Ctrl+V into your target app.
Lightweight & Private
•No data collection; everything runs locally in your browser
•No account required
•No internet connection needed after install
•Tiny footprint; doesn’t slow down your browsing
•Open source; inspect the code yourself

If you’ve been copying special characters from random websites, or skipping tone marks when writing in your language, TonalKeys fixes this.