Mobile
Arabic Voice → Franco Keyboard
An Android keyboard: speak Arabic, and it types Franco (Arabizi) in any app, live
- Status
- In progress
- Role
- Solo — personal project
- Stack
- Flutter · Kotlin · Dart · Android IME · Speech recognition
Problem
Many Egyptians chat in Franco: Arabic words written with Latin letters and digits (3 for ع,
7 for ح). Typing it letter by letter is slow; I wanted to just speak Arabic and get Franco.
Approach
A real system keyboard (an Android input method), available in any app with a text field:
- Tap the mic and speak; Android's speech recognizer (Egyptian Arabic) transcribes it.
- The recognized Arabic is converted to Franco as you speak, shown as composing text and committed
when you stop. The character mapping (
ع → 3,ح → 7,خ → 5,ء → 2…) is unit-tested. - The keyboard itself is a Kotlin
InputMethodService; its UI is Flutter, connected through platform channels. A setup screen grants the microphone permission and opens the keyboard settings.
Result
It works as an everyday keyboard on my phone. It isn't on the Play Store yet: the release build still needs its own signing key.
