// detect rtl & ltr characters in any string
Detect right-to-left (RTL) and left-to-right (LTR) characters in any text. Analyze Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and mixed-direction strings instantly.
Ready to analyze
Paste text and click Analyze DirectionEnter any string β Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Urdu, mixed content, or plain Latin.
The tool scans every Unicode code point and classifies it as RTL, LTR, or neutral.
See the overall direction verdict, percentage breakdown, detected scripts, and a character-level map.
direction property needsThe Text Direction Checker analyzes any string and detects whether it contains right-to-left (RTL) characters β such as Arabic, Hebrew, or Persian β left-to-right (LTR) characters, or a bidirectional (bidi) mix of both. It works entirely in your browser; nothing is ever sent to a server.
Arabic, Hebrew, Persian (Farsi), Urdu, Syriac, Thaana, NKo, Samaritan, and several other scripts are classified as RTL. The tool covers 13+ Unicode RTL ranges including presentation forms.
Bidirectional (bidi) text contains both RTL and LTR characters β for example, an Arabic sentence that includes an English brand name or a number. Browsers handle bidi rendering using the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (UBA).
Spaces, punctuation, control characters, and Unicode bidi formatting marks (U+200BβU+200F, U+202AβU+202E) are counted as neutral β they don't have a strong directional property on their own.
All analysis is performed directly in your browser using JavaScript. No text is transmitted to any external server, making this tool safe for sensitive or private content.
Use the dir HTML attribute (dir="rtl" or dir="ltr") or the CSS direction property. For mixed content, the dir="auto" value lets the browser detect direction from the first strong character.
Yes. Unicode bidi control characters like RLM (U+200F), LRM (U+200E), RLO (U+202E), and others are counted as neutral/control characters and flagged in the character map.
The tool supports up to 50,000 characters. The character map displays the first 500 characters for performance; use the "Show all" toggle to view the full breakdown for shorter inputs.
Yes. Persian (Farsi) and Urdu use the Arabic script, which falls within the Arabic Unicode ranges (U+0600βU+06FF and U+0750βU+077F). Both are detected and classified as RTL characters correctly.
A text direction checker is a tool that analyzes a string of characters and determines whether they flow left-to-right (LTR), right-to-left (RTL), or in a bidirectional (bidi) mixture. This matters enormously in web development, mobile apps, and any software that handles multilingual content β because rendering a string in the wrong direction can make it completely unreadable.
This tool works by examining every Unicode code point in your input and cross-referencing it against the Unicode Character Database's directional categories. Characters in scripts like Arabic (U+0600βU+06FF), Hebrew (U+0590βU+05FF), and Persian are classified as "strong RTL." Latin, Cyrillic, and most Asian scripts are "strong LTR." Spaces and punctuation are "neutral" and inherit direction from context.
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The most widely spoken RTL languages include Arabic (over 400 million native speakers), Hebrew, Persian/Farsi, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Yiddish, Syriac, and Thaana (used in the Maldives). All of these share the property that reading begins at the right side of the page and moves left β the opposite of most Western writing systems.
In Unicode, RTL scripts are assigned specific code point ranges. Arabic alone occupies multiple ranges: the core Arabic block (U+0600βU+06FF), the Arabic Supplement (U+0750βU+077F), Arabic Extended-A (U+08A0βU+08FF), and the Arabic Presentation Forms A and B blocks used in legacy encodings.
Bidirectional text occurs whenever RTL and LTR characters appear in the same string. A common example: an Arabic sentence that includes an English product name, or a Hebrew paragraph that quotes a URL. Browsers implement the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (UBA, defined in Unicode Standard Annex #9) to automatically handle the visual reordering needed to display bidi text correctly.
However, bidi text can cause subtle bugs. A string that looks correct in one context may appear mirrored or garbled in another β especially when copying between text editors, databases, or APIs that don't preserve Unicode bidi metadata. This is why having a tool to inspect the directional composition of a string is valuable for debugging.
In web development, you control text direction at the HTML level with the dir attribute and at the CSS level with the direction property. Setting dir="rtl" on a block element reverses text alignment, list markers, table column order, and scroll direction. The special value dir="auto" instructs the browser to detect direction from the first strong directional character in the content β useful for user-generated text where direction is unknown.
CSS also provides unicode-bidi for finer control. Values like bidi-override can force characters to render in a specific direction regardless of their Unicode properties β which is powerful but should be used carefully, as it can make text unreadable if misapplied.
Developers frequently encounter RTL-related bugs in several areas: string truncation that cuts from the wrong end; regular expressions that fail to account for RTL characters; database collations that sort RTL strings incorrectly; and API responses that return RTL text without the necessary Unicode bidi markers, causing display issues on the client side.
Testing for RTL is often an afterthought in development workflows. Using a direction checker early β especially when handling user-generated content or internationalizing an existing application β can prevent layout breakage that only appears in production when real users submit Arabic or Hebrew content.
Unicode defines several invisible control characters specifically for managing bidirectional text. These include the Right-to-Left Mark (RLM, U+200F), Left-to-Right Mark (LRM, U+200E), Right-to-Left Override (RLO, U+202E), and Left-to-Right Override (LRO, U+202A), among others. These characters have no visible glyph but influence the bidi algorithm significantly.
Malicious actors have exploited bidi override characters to disguise the true direction of code or filenames β a technique sometimes called a "bidi attack" or "Trojan Source" attack. A text direction checker that surfaces these invisible characters is a useful security tool as well as a developer utility.
The Text Direction Checker processes your input entirely in the browser using JavaScript's native Unicode string handling. It iterates over every code point (not byte), maps each to its Unicode block, and assigns a directional category. The results are aggregated into counts and percentages, and the overall direction is determined by majority: if more than 50% of strong directional characters are RTL, the string is classified as RTL; if both are present, it is classified as Mixed (Bidi).
Because processing happens locally, the tool is fast even for large inputs, and no data ever leaves your browser β making it suitable for analyzing proprietary or sensitive text content.