Type English in WhatsApp. Send Hebrew that sounds like you.
The problem with typing Hebrew in WhatsApp
You open WhatsApp. Someone texts you in Hebrew. You want to reply properly, not in English, not with a clumsy auto-translation paste. You want to text like you would if Hebrew came naturally to you.
So you do what most people do. You open Google Translate, type your message, copy the result, switch back to WhatsApp, paste it, and send. Your friend replies in three seconds. You spend forty-five seconds on that reply.
That's the real cost. Not one message. Every message.
There's a second problem most people discover later: the Hebrew comes out in the wrong gender. Hebrew verbs and adjectives change form depending on who's speaking. “I'm tired” is אני עייף for a man and אני עייפה for a woman. Translation apps don't know which one you are, so they guess, and they often guess wrong. You send the message anyway, your Israeli contact notices, and it's a little off. Not catastrophic. Just not you.
There are Hebrew keyboards on Google Play that solve a different problem: they let you type Hebrew characters directly. Useful if you already know Hebrew. Not useful if you think in English and want to send Hebrew.
The translator apps solve the language gap, but they add the copy-paste detour and guess your gender.
What Bridgi does instead
Bridgi is an Android keyboard. You install it once, set it up in about a minute, and it lives in your keyboard row alongside your regular keyboard.
In WhatsApp or any other app, tap the globe key to switch to Bridgi. Type your message in English, the way you'd naturally say it. Tap Translate. Bridgi replaces your English with Hebrew, right there in the text field. Tap send.
You never left the chat.
How it works: three steps
- Tap the globe key in WhatsApp to switch to Bridgi.
- Type your message in English.
- Tap Translate. Hebrew appears in the text field. Send.
That's the whole workflow. No app-switch. No copy-paste. No detour.
Your gender, set once
During setup, you set your own gender once. From that point on, Bridgi is built to use the right form automatically, and it flags anything it's not sure about. אני עייפה if you're a woman. אני עייף if you're a man. You don't choose a gender context per message; you set it once and it holds.
This matters more than it sounds. If you text in Hebrew every day and your gender keeps coming out wrong, the messages don't sound like you. They sound like someone else sent them. Getting the gender right is the difference between a translation and a message.
For a deeper read on why Hebrew gender goes wrong in translation and what the grammar actually looks like, this article goes through it.
Built with your privacy in mind
Bridgi needs an internet connection to translate. On Android, that network access comes with the app automatically when you install it, so there's no separate Full Access prompt to accept the way iPhone keyboards work. Translation happens on our server, not inside the keyboard.
Only the message you tap Translate on is sent, and it isn't stored afterward on our side. No account. No third-party analytics on what you type. No ads.
Because translation happens off-device, Bridgi needs an internet connection to work. It won't translate on a plane or somewhere with no signal.
What Bridgi is
An Android keyboard. English into Hebrew. Gender-correct, set once. Needs an internet connection to translate. Bridgi subscription: $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year, with a 7-day free trial to start, no card required.
Version 1 does English to Hebrew. That's the one direction it does well. More language pairs are planned.