How to write in Samskritam in Gmail

First go to Settings->General and enable Google Input Tools:

Scroll all the way to the bottom and save the changes:

Now you can configure the languages you want to use in gmail, after which you will see an icon with अ in the top right corner of gmail window:

You can toggle this by clicking अ 

And now when you type in english, it will transliterate to Samskritam!

Spread the word and tell others about it.

How to write in Samskritam in Chrome browser

There is a great chrome plugin called "Google Input Tools" that you can install on Chrome browser. This gives us the ability to write and share in Samskritam or any devnaagri script based language like Hindi or Marathi. Other options are Gujrati, Tamil etc.

Here, after installation, it will show up as installed.

Now is the time to configure it by invoking chrome://extensions in the chrome url bar.

Click on Options and select संस्कृतम्  (and any other language that you want to select):

Now you will see a downward arrow icon on the right top corner of the browser window. This is the google input extension. Activate it by clicking on it and selecting the language you have installed:

Now you can just go to Facebook or any website and start typing in english, and it will transliterate itself to sanskritam. You can choose between the various options that come up.

This is a cool way to write and share shloks from vedic scriptures on social media.

How to type in Samskritam, Hindi or Marathi on your Android phone

Thanks to "Google Input Hindi" app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.inputmethod.hindi) released on Google Play store, we can now transliterate (meaning you type in english and it becomes hindi phonetically) in Hindi. E.g. When I type in Namaste in english and press spacebar, It will become नमस्ते !

The description on the Google Play app is not straightforward. It took a while to figure this out, so I thought of making a blogpost for the benefit of others.

While the name of the app says Google Hindi Input, it is good for typing in Samskritam and Marathi as well.

After installing it, go to the Language and Input Settings and do two things.
1) enable the Google Hindi Input - Hindi Transliterate keyboard by selecting it
2) make it the default keyboard

Now when you open a compose email or  SMS screen, you can see the below keyboard coming up.

Keep in mind that you have to touch the a=>अ button to the left of the spacebar to activate transliteration. If you don't do this, it will act like a normal English android keyboard, which is a really nice feature.

It even shows predictive words... e.g. when I typed "asti" अस्ति did not come by default, but I had to choose it from the suggestions below.

So have fun with the Hindi transliterate keyboard! I used it for composing SMS messages and emails in sanskritam language as it also uses devnaagri script. This will help all the Kansas City Samskritam enthusiasts to compose simple sentences in Samskritam and make social media updates in Samskritam, Hindi or Marathi language.

Thank you, Google, for making this tool for the Samskritam, Hindi and Marathi speakers.