Extract text from on-screen keyboards (KVK)
To convert KVK keyboards to another format, you need Keyman Developer or other Settings software.
To convert other file formats to the "Keyboard Layout File" file type, you need software like Keyman Developer or a similar tool.
A .KVK file is a compiled Keyman On-Screen Keyboard file used to display custom virtual keyboard layouts. These files map complex character sets, dead keys, and constraints to a visual on-screen interface for users typing in specialized languages.
Created with Keyman Developer (originally built by Tavultesoft and now maintained as an open-source project by SIL International), this format is designed strictly to work alongside a compiled .KMX keyboard engine file. The major disadvantage of the .KVK file is its proprietary binary nature. It is completely locked to the Keyman ecosystem, meaning you cannot natively open or view the keyboard layout on standard operating systems without installing the dedicated desktop software. Furthermore, because it is a compiled distribution format, making direct edits to the layout is highly restrictive.
Because this is a specialized input-method configuration file, direct conversion to standard visual formats like PDF or PNG is functionally impossible through basic tools. When developers need to update the layout, the only useful conversion target is decompiling the file back to its original .KVKS (XML) source code. While standard online converters fail because they expect standard documents, our platform can safely inspect the underlying binary wrapper, identify the software version, and extract readable metadata or text strings to help you recover your layout data.
Convert.Guru analyzes your KVK file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert KVK file to , you can use Keyman Developer or similar software from the "Virtual Keyboard Layout Data" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert files to KVK, try Keyman Developer or another comparable tool in the "Virtual Keyboard Layout Data" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our KVK converter.