How to type in Farsi on your phone
Typing even a single salam in real script changes how Persian feels. Setup takes about two minutes.
On iPhone, go to Settings, then General, then Keyboard, then Keyboards, then Add New Keyboard, and choose Persian. On Android with Gboard, open Gboard settings, then Languages, then Add keyboard, and choose Persian. A globe key now switches between English and Farsi wherever you type.
Choose Persian, not Arabic
Persian and Arabic share most of an alphabet, but Persian adds four letters of its own: پ چ ژ گ (p, ch, zh, g). The Arabic keyboard is missing them, and it renders two shared letters differently: Persian uses ک and ی where Arabic uses slightly different forms. Typing Farsi on an Arabic keyboard produces text that looks subtly wrong to Iranian eyes and can even break searches. Always pick the keyboard labelled Persian or Farsi.
Right to left happens automatically
You do not manage direction yourself. Switch to the Persian keyboard and the cursor, punctuation, and letter joining all flow right to left on their own. Mixing English words into a Farsi sentence also works; the phone handles the direction changes.
The half-space, Persian's special key
Persian has a character English lacks: the nim-fasele نیمفاصله, or half-space. It separates parts of a word without fully breaking it, so میروم (I go) stays one word visually instead of splitting into two. On most phone keyboards you get it by holding the space bar and choosing the narrow space. Native typists care about it; as a learner, knowing it exists is enough to read what you see.
Typing on desktop
On a Mac: System Settings, Keyboard, Input Sources, add Persian. On Windows: Settings, Time and Language, Language and Region, add Persian. Both give you a menu-bar or taskbar switcher. The standard layout puts letters roughly where Iranians expect them, and on-screen keyboard viewers help while you learn the positions.
What about Finglish?
Plenty of Persian conversation online happens in Finglish, Persian written in Latin letters, and that is fine for chat. But typing real script, even slowly, teaches letter shapes faster than flashcards, because you are recalling them rather than just recognising them.
Add the keyboard today, change a contact's name to Persian script, text one salam سلام. Small, real usage is how the script stops being decoration and starts being writing.