Problem one: the order flips
Unicode sorts every character into one of three buckets: strong right-to-left, strong left-to-right, and neutral — which is where the trouble starts. Spaces, full stops, commas and brackets are all neutral. They have no direction of their own, so they borrow one from the characters around them.
So when an Arabic sentence ends with an English word followed by a full stop, the stop sees
Latin text beside it, joins the Latin run, and lands on the wrong side. The same rule flips
brackets the wrong way round, breaks URLs into fragments, and shuffles model names like
iPhone 15 Pro Max.
The fix is not to rewrite the sentence. It is to insert invisible control characters — zero-width, never rendered, never printed — that tell the app where the Latin run ends and which side the neutral characters belong to.
Problem two: the letters fall apart
Arabic letters connect to their neighbours, and each has up to four shapes depending on where it sits in the word. Capable software works those out for you. Plenty does not — After Effects, game engines like Unity, embroidery and CNC tooling, some Canva templates — and instead draws each letter in its isolated shape, left to right. The result is disconnected letters in reversed order.
Export for design prepares text for exactly those programs: it converts every letter to its
correct contextual glyph from the Arabic Presentation Forms-B block, merges
lam-alef into a single codepoint, and arranges the characters in visual order so a naive
left-to-right renderer draws them correctly. Digits and Latin words are never reversed —
the year 2024 stays 2024.
Which mode to use
- Fix direction: Twitter, WhatsApp, Notion, Slack, email, terminals, code editors, CSV files.
- Export for design: After Effects, Premiere, game engines, embroidery and engraving software.
If the text stays text, use Fix direction. If the text becomes a picture, use Export for design.
Do not put design-mode output on a website or in a message — the letters become glyphs rather than letters, so search and copy stop behaving properly.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my Arabic text get scrambled when I mix in English or numbers?
The Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm classifies characters as strong right-to-left, strong left-to-right, or neutral. Neutral characters — spaces, full stops, brackets — inherit their direction from their neighbours. When an Arabic sentence ends in an English word followed by a full stop, the full stop attaches to the Latin run and lands on the wrong side.
What is the difference between Fix direction and Export for design?
Fix direction adds invisible control characters without altering a letter, so your text stays copyable, searchable and editable. Export for design rewrites the letters into connected forms and bakes in visual order, for software that cannot render Arabic at all.
Why do letters appear disconnected and backwards in After Effects?
Those programs draw each character in its isolated shape, left to right, applying neither Arabic joining rules nor the bidirectional algorithm. Feeding them pre-shaped text in visual order is the fix, and that is what design mode produces.
Does the tool change my text or add anything visible?
In Fix direction mode, no. The added characters are zero-width and never render, and your letters are untouched — the result is your text exactly as you wrote it, plus a few invisible markers. The two character counts above the panels show how many were added. In Export for design mode the letters do change into connected forms — that is the point of the mode.
If I run the same text through twice, do the hidden characters pile up?
No. Every control character already present is stripped before anything is added, so the result is identical whether the text goes through once or ten times. Pasting previously-processed text is handled the same way — it is cleaned first, automatically.
Is my text sent to a server?
No. Everything runs in your browser. No back end, no upload, no tracking, no ads. You can disconnect from the internet and the page keeps working.
Does it work with Hebrew, Persian and Urdu?
Fix direction treats Hebrew exactly like Arabic. Design mode covers the Persian, Urdu and Kurdish letters (پ چ ژ گ ک ی ڈ ڑ ٹ ھ) alongside the Arabic ones. Fuller dedicated support is still on the roadmap.