How to display Arabic ligatures

Question

How to display Arabic ligatures

Hi everybody, this might be a bit of a niche question but does anybody know how to generate and display Arabic letter combinations called “ligatures”. These are where two letters combine to make a modified form of the letters. They look really cool but you can’t get them in Google Translate!

You can copy them on this web page here https://symbl.cc/en/FC0C/ but when you paste it into Text Edit or the search field of a search engine on a browser you just get the ordinary non- ligature version! The ordinary non- ligature version of this example is … تح

Are there any Arabic speakers who can help with this? Any ideas would be great. Thanks!

Posted on Nov 30, 2025 2:37 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

azaksalmarzur28

Level 2

450 points

Nov 30, 2025 6:37 PM in response to Gareth_Apple96

Arabic ligatures like the one you linked are real Unicode characters, but most macOS text fields normalize them to standard letters. To display them, you must use a font that supports Arabic Presentation Forms (like Geeza Pro, Amiri, Noto Naskh), and use an app that allows advanced Arabic shaping (TextEdit Rich Text, Pages, Word, etc.). Browsers and search fields usually will not display them by design.

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

121,998 points

Dec 1, 2025 2:56 PM in response to Gareth_Apple96

Gareth_Apple96 wrote:

do you know how to do it in Text Edit?

It is the same (at least in my Sequoia):

TextEdit > Format > Font > Show Fonts

Select Al Bayan (Geeza does not work)

Type characters and select them

Click on 3 dots at top left of Fonts panel and select Typography

Check box for Optional Ligatures

(What is your MacOS version? If older, some things might be different or not work right)

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

121,998 points

Dec 1, 2025 6:59 AM in response to Gareth_Apple96

Below is an example of how these ligatures can be displayed. It requires a word processor and font that support special typographic features which can be switched on to generate the special ligature glyph from the normal arabic unicode characters in the U+0600 block.

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

121,998 points

Dec 4, 2025 9:40 AM in response to Gareth_Apple96

Feel free to just copy/paste problematic text here and I or someone can probably help with any issues.

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Answer 5

Dec 4, 2025 9:10 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks I’m just experimenting. Some of them worked automatically when I changed the font to Al Bayan. However, I’m having some issues where I can’t change the font of some of the text. I’ll update the thread shortly with my OS details, after some more experimentation. Thanks again.

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Answer 6

Dec 1, 2025 2:40 PM in response to azaksalmarzur28

Thanks, Azak, in Text Edit it is Rich Text by default and even in Geeza Pro the ligatures don’t work! I’m just trying to work out what Tom is trying to explain below! Thanks again!

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Answer 7

Dec 1, 2025 2:51 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks Tom, I see that you are displaying the ligature in your document but do you know how to do it in Text Edit?

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Answer 8

Dec 3, 2025 2:37 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks Tom. I have made a Pages file now. How do you get that Typography window? Thanks again.

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Answer 9

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

121,998 points

Dec 3, 2025 3:33 PM in response to Gareth_Apple96

Gareth_Apple96 wrote:

Thanks Tom. DmI have made a Pages file now. How do you get that Typography window? Thanks again.

Type two characters and select them

Pages > Format > Font > Show Fonts

Select Al Bayan (Geeza does not work)

Click on 3 dots at top left of Fonts panel and select Typography

Check box for Optional Ligatures

(What is your MacOS version? If older, some things might be different or not work right)

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Answer 10

Dec 5, 2025 2:20 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

My OS is Monterey 12.7.6. I’m still having issues! I’ve got a list of letter combinations which have a ligature. It was originally in Geeza Pro. When I turned it into Al Bayan, some of the ligatures were generated automatically. I did not need to copy and paste them from that webpage.

However, there are numerous letter combinations which did not automatically generate ligatures in Al Bayan and I have not been able to copy and paste them from the website. For example this one https://symbl.cc/en/FC12/ …

ﰒ

When I paste it into my docuemt it always becomes Geeza Pro even if all the other text is Al Bayan and it's not even possible to change the font! Any advise or ideas would be great. Thanks again.

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Answer 11

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

121,998 points

Dec 5, 2025 3:40 PM in response to Gareth_Apple96

To change the font and test for ligatures you need to have the two characters input separately instead of the unitary FC12. If I type th and m and try different fonts in Text Edit, there are some that produce the ligature, like Farisi and Mishafi, but al bayan and various others do not (see below). That's just the result of the font makers choices of supporting some ligatures and not others.

Can you explain what the end purpose of your project is? Those Arabic code points in the arabic presentation forms ranges are not really intended for use in normal unicode text -- they are in the standard to provide backward compatibility with some pre-unicode systems from the 30 years ago and earlier. Whether there is a single font that has typographic support for all the ligatures in those ranges I don't know, but Mishafi seems to have a lot of options in the pane in Sequoia. It's possible that Monterey from 4 years ago is more limited.

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