Swarachakra

Swarachakra (Devanagari: स्वरचक्र) is a free text input application for Indic scripts, created by the IDIN group at the Industrial Design Center (IDC) of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Its alphabetical keyboard layout proved more effective than the Inscript layout, which is a QWERTY-based design and the official government standard in India. As of 2014, the app is available for Android devices in twelve languages, with work on additional languages ongoing. It is one of several projects at IDC focused on developing interactive products for developing countries.

The motivation behind Swarachakra stems from India’s linguistic diversity—the country has 1,635 languages, including dialects and sub-dialects, while its currency notes display 15 major languages. Although smartphone use is growing, typing in Indic scripts has long been difficult. A 2005 India Human Development Survey found that 72% of men and 83% of women reported speaking no English, while only 5% of men and 3% of women spoke it fluently. Despite Indian languages being widely used in oral and written communication, radio, TV, newspapers, and magazines, English remains the dominant language for text input. The project aims to increase text input in Indian languages on smartphones and tablets, helping those with little or no English or who prefer not to use it.

Text entry in Indian languages poses significant challenges. For Devanagari, for instance, 52 to 65 keys are needed for frequently used characters (25 consonants, 9 semi-vowels, 3 common conjuncts, 13 vowels, a halant, and 13 vowel modifiers), whereas Latin script requires only 26. The government-standard Inscript layout uses 42 keys but omits many punctuation marks, including common ones like the question mark and quotation mark. It also groups unrelated characters on the same key, such as म ण, ह ङ, ऍ १, र ३, ज्ञ ५, त्र ६, क्ष ७, and श्र. This is thought to explain why Inscript and other QWERTY-based input methods have not gained widespread popularity.

Researchers at IDC have been exploring alternatives to QWERTY keyboards for Indic text input since 2001. Earlier projects included hardware devices like Dynakey, Barakhadi, Keylekh, and e-Lekh. As mobile phones became more powerful, the group began working on mobile text input in 2007 with Saral. In 2010, two touch-screen designs emerged: Swarachakra and Disha.