LipiTools
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About LipiTools

LipiTools makes free, private tools for South Asian scripts, starting with Urdu.

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Who runs LipiTools

LipiTools is run by Wasiullah Soomro from Lahore, Pakistan. I build and maintain the tools, write the guides, and answer every message that comes through the contact page.

Why this site exists

Anyone who works with Urdu on a computer knows the routine. A story typed in InPage has to go on a website, and it turns into symbols. A quote copied from a PDF comes out backwards. An amount has to be written out in words on a cheque, and nobody is sure whether 67 is سڑسٹھ or something else. Online tools exist for some of these jobs, but many are outdated, covered in pop-ups, or quietly upload your text to a server.

LipiTools puts the everyday Urdu text jobs in one place and does them properly: in your browser, for free, with no sign-up, and with results you can check.

What the tools do

There are 16 tools today, all for Urdu and for Punjabi written in Shahmukhi. The full list, grouped by job, is on the Urdu tools page:

Each tool comes with a step-by-step explanation, real examples and answers to common questions, and our guides cover the background in more depth. General questions about the site are answered in the FAQ.

Our privacy approach

Every tool on this site runs entirely in your browser. When you paste text, convert it, count it or turn it into an image, the work happens on your own device. Your text, names and photos are never uploaded to us or anyone else, and we do not store them, not even in your browser's storage. The only exception is a message you choose to send through the contact form. Details are in our privacy policy.

How we check accuracy

Converters are only useful if they are right. Each tool is backed by automated tests that run on every change: every entry in the InPage character table, round trips from Unicode to InPage and back, every Urdu number from 0 to 999 plus lakh, crore, arab and kharab values, and dozens of real-world repair cases. When a user reports text that did not convert correctly, it is added to our test collection so the same problem cannot come back.

Before a tool is published it is also tried in a real browser, on a phone-sized screen and on a computer: the sample button, the main action, copy and download, empty and very long input, and text in the wrong format. A tool that does not pass is fixed or left out; nothing half-finished goes on the site.

Still, no converter is perfect. Please proofread important documents before you publish or print them. See our disclaimer.

Credits and open sources

We built on openly licensed work and are grateful to the people who shared it:

  • InPage character tables: the InPage 1.x/2.x byte-to-Unicode mapping was compiled from the community research project inpage-format (MIT licence) and cross-checked against zanysoft/unicode-inpage-converter by Mubashar Ahmad (MIT licence).
  • Phonetic keyboard: the typing pad follows the CRULP Urdu Phonetic Keyboard Layout v1.1 published by the Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing / Center for Language Engineering, Lahore, cross-checked with the MIT-licensed Keyman keyboard by SIL Global.
  • Fonts: Noto Nastaliq Urdu (The Noto Project Authors), Gulzar (The Gulzar Project Authors) and Inter (The Inter Project Authors), all under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. Licence texts are published in /fonts/.
  • Word lists: the spell checker and Roman Urdu converter use the Urdu Dictionary 0.64 by Kashif Aqeel with a word list from CRULP (LGPL), and word frequencies from FrequencyWords by Hermit Dave, based on OpenSubtitles (CC BY-SA 4.0). The Gurmukhi ↔ Shahmukhi word list is derived from Punjabi Wikipedia in both scripts (CC BY-SA 4.0), following transliteration research by M. G. Abbas Malik and by T. S. Saini and G. S. Lehal. Derived lists are published in /data/ under the same licences.
  • Engines: HarfBuzz (MIT) shapes Nastaliq in our PDFs, pdf.js (Apache 2.0) reads PDFs, and tesseract.js with Tesseract's Urdu model (Apache 2.0) powers Urdu OCR. All of them run in your browser.
  • Poetry samples are by Mirza Ghalib, Mir Taqi Mir and Allama Iqbal, whose works are in the public domain.

“InPage” is a trademark of its owner. LipiTools is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by InPage’s developers; the name is used only to describe file compatibility.

Get in touch

Found a word that did not convert, or have an idea for a tool? Write to hello@lipitools.com or use the contact form. I usually reply within 2 working days.