Kedmanee keyboard layout
The standard Thai keyboard layout, generated from this site's own layout data.
Try it: step through ไก่ (“chicken,” kai) one keystroke at a time and watch the matching key light up.
Step 0 of 3 chicken, kai
Why the keyboard looks like this
Look at the diagram above. It seems arbitrary until you know two things. The most common characters sit under your resting fingers: scan the home row — a s d f g h j k l ; ' — and you'll find seven of Thai's everyday consonants (ฟ ห ก ด ส ว ง), the two vowels you'll type constantly (เ and า), and the two most common tone marks (่ and ้). Kedmanee's designers put the highest-traffic characters where your fingers already rest, the same idea behind QWERTY's home row — just tuned for Thai instead of English.
The shift face exists because Thai doesn't fit on one layer. Thai has 44 consonants, 15 vowel forms, 4 tone marks, and 10 digits — well over 70 symbols competing for roughly 47 physical keys. There's no room for all of it on one face, so Kedmanee splits it: common characters on the base face, the rest behind Shift. Unlike a Latin keyboard, where Shift just means “capital letter,” on this keyboard Shift is effectively a second alphabet.