Fix right-to-left text that breaks when you paste it
Paste Arabic, Persian, Hebrew or Urdu text and copy it back fixed. Punctuation, numbers and English words stay where you put them.
Apps set to English keep the text on the left. That is expected: what matters is the order of words, numbers and punctuation.
Tags show where the invisible marks are. You will not see them anywhere else.
Free, no sign-up. Your text never leaves your browser.
How to fix RTL text in three steps
Paste your text
Drop in a caption, a message or a whole document. Typing works too.
It is fixed as you go
Every line gets its direction locked and stray characters cleaned out. Open Preview to see the difference.
Paste it anywhere
Press Copy fixed text, then paste into Instagram, Telegram, Word or any other app.
Use RTLFix as an app
Install it on your phone or computer. It opens in its own window, starts instantly and works offline.
- Opens in its own window
- Works without internet
- In the Android share menu
On Android, share text from any app to RTLFix and it opens already fixed.
In Chrome or Edge, use the install button in the address bar. On Android, open the browser menu and choose Install app.
No app store and nothing to update: new versions arrive on their own.
Why does right-to-left text break?
Every app has to decide which way a line runs. Most guess from the first letter that has a direction, or assume left to right because the app is set to English. A line that starts with a number or an English word, like «2.4 الإصدار الجديد», is then treated as left-to-right.
Punctuation has no direction of its own. A full stop, a question mark or a bracket takes the direction of whatever sits next to it, so it jumps to the wrong end of the line, brackets flip, and numbers and English words appear out of order.
Your text is not damaged. The app is missing one piece of information: that the line runs right to left. RTLFix adds it as invisible Unicode marks that travel with the text wherever you paste it.
What RTLFix fixes
All of this happens automatically when you paste. Only native digits are your choice.
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Line direction
Each line is locked to its own direction: right-to-left lines with the RLE and PDF marks, English lines with LRE. Full stops, question marks and brackets stay at the end of the sentence.
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Arabic ي and ك in Persian, Urdu and Kurdish
Text typed on an Arabic keyboard gets the correct letters. Arabic text keeps its letters, and Pashto keeps its ي.
يكیک -
Punctuation
In Arabic-script text,
,;?%become،؛؟٪. Thousands separators such as 1,000 stay as they are. -
Half-spaces
Doubled half-spaces, half-spaces stuck to a normal space, and zero-width spaces typed in their place are repaired.
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Stray characters
Leftover direction marks, unusual spaces, soft hyphens and kashida that is not joined to a letter are removed. Decorative kashida and emoji stay.
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Signed numbers
−5 and +12 keep their sign in front of the number.
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Blank lines
Empty lines survive in Instagram captions and other apps that would otherwise collapse them.
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Letters pasted from PDFs
Arabic presentation forms, the look-alike characters PDFs often produce, are turned back into normal letters you can search.
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Native digits, if you want them
Switch on Native digits to write 123 as ۱۲۳ or ١٢٣. Switching it off brings back the digits you started with.
123۱۲۳
Links, email addresses and English words are never touched. An address like rtlfix.app/fa or a code like SAVE20 comes out exactly as it went in.
Where it helps, and where it does not
Works anywhere that supports Unicode text
- Instagram captions, bios and comments
- Telegram and WhatsApp
- X, Facebook, Threads and LinkedIn
- YouTube titles and descriptions
- TikTok captions
- Word, Google Docs and Notion
- Gmail, Outlook and other email
- Slack and Microsoft Teams
- Website forms, file names and SMS
It helps most when the app or the phone is set to English and your text is not.
Does not help in apps without right-to-left support
Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects with default settings, CapCut, most game engines and many subtitle tools ignore direction marks. There the letters come out disconnected or reversed, because the app’s text engine cannot lay out right-to-left text. No characters you paste can fix that.
Tip In recent versions of Photoshop and After Effects, open Preferences > Type and choose the Middle Eastern and South Asian text engine. Arabic, Persian and Hebrew then display correctly.
The invisible marks RTLFix adds
These are standard Unicode characters. They have no width, never print, and every modern app understands them.
| Mark | Code point | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| RLERight-to-left embedding | U+202B | Starts a right-to-left line. |
| LRELeft-to-right embedding | U+202A | Starts an English line inside right-to-left text. |
| PDFPop directional formatting | U+202C | Closes the line’s direction. Left out when a line ends with a link, so the link keeps working. |
| LRMLeft-to-right mark | U+200E | Keeps the sign of −5 or +12 in front of the number. |
| ZWNJZero-width non-joiner | U+200C | The Persian half-space. RTLFix also puts one on every blank line so apps keep the line. |
Questions people ask
Why does my Arabic or Persian text get messed up when I paste it?
The app you paste into decides the direction of each line from its first letter, or assumes left to right because it is set to English. Numbers, English words and punctuation then land in the wrong place. RTLFix adds invisible marks that tell the app each line runs right to left.
The text looks the same after fixing. Did anything happen?
Yes. The marks are invisible, and this page already shows right-to-left text correctly, so nothing seems to change here. Open the Preview tab to compare the text with and without RTLFix in an app set to English, or Hidden marks to see every mark.
Does it add characters to my text?
Two invisible marks per line, plus one on each side of a signed number. They never display or print, but they do count towards character limits, such as the length of an SMS.
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. RTLFix runs entirely in your browser. No text is sent to a server or stored, and the page keeps working if you go offline after it has loaded.
Will it change my letters?
Only in Persian, Urdu and Kurdish, where the Arabic ي and ك are replaced with ی and ک. Arabic and Hebrew letters are never changed, and Pashto keeps its ي.
Which languages does RTLFix support?
Persian (Farsi), Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, Pashto and Kurdish (Sorani). Each line is detected on its own, so one text can mix languages, and English lines are kept left to right.
Why doesn’t it fix text in Photoshop, CapCut or After Effects?
With default settings those apps do not support right-to-left text at all, so they ignore direction marks and draw the letters disconnected or reversed. In Photoshop and After Effects, choose the Middle Eastern and South Asian text engine under Preferences > Type.
Can I get my text back without the marks?
Yes. Paste it here, open Hidden marks and press Copy without marks. You get clean text with the letter and punctuation fixes but no invisible marks.
Does it work on my phone?
Yes, in any modern mobile browser. Use the Paste button to bring text in, then press Copy fixed text.
Is there an RTLFix app?
Yes. You can install RTLFix from the browser on Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows and Mac, with no app store. It opens in its own window and works offline, and on Android it appears in the share menu.
About RTLFix
RTLFix is a free, independent tool for anyone who writes in a right-to-left script and pastes text into apps built for English. It is made by a product designer who writes in Persian every day.
There are no accounts, ads or trackers. The page loads once, and from then on everything happens on your device.