Letters

The most frequently used letters generally appear in the inner rings, and less used letters appear in the out rings. Letters are arranged in a semi-alphabetic arrangement in the clockwise direction, but not strictly so. Some effort is made to group related letters together (related either by sound or shape).

Tapping a key once, the modifier letters on the left (ኡ, ኢ ኣ,) and right (ኤ, ኦ, ዋ) of the outer ring will update. For example, tapping ገ, the modifiers change to ጉ, ጊ, ጋ, ጌ, ጎ and ጓ. If a modifier is tapped, ገ will be updated on screen and replaced with the selected letter.

Note how the ዋ key changes to ጓ. Tapping the ጓ key repeatedly will update ጓ on the screen to the related syllables: ጐ, ጒ, ጔ and ጕ.

As an alternative, if preferred, holding a key down for a few moments (called a “longpress”) a popup menu appears where you can tap the letter desired. The popup menu for ግ is shown below:

Like the letter keys, the ። and ’ keys also have popup menus that offer the most frequently used punctuation.

Numerals

Tap the 1/፩ key to shift to the numerals layer. The numerals layer presents the Western numbers, Geʾez numbers, and all Geʾez punctuation.

Tapping the @ shifts to a 3rd layer to access all remaining punctuation:

Punctuation

Punctuation is distributed over two layers on mobile phones, and appears on a single layer on tablets where more screen space is available. The first punctuation layer provides the most frequently used set of symbols:

Tapping the #+€ key shifts to a final layer to access all remaining punctuation:

Simply tap the ሀለሐ key to return to the Mesob letters layers.