How to change keyboard layout in Windows 10

Many Win­dows users, espe­cial­ly those who work with large amounts of tex­tu­al con­tent, often expe­ri­ence prob­lems switch­ing the input lan­guage cor­rect­ly for var­i­ous rea­sons, which may include:

1. key­board fail­ure;

2. for­get­ful­ness or incom­plete press­ing of “Alt + Shift” when typ­ing, when the user looks at the keys, and not at the mon­i­tor screen;

3. mal­ware activ­i­ty;

4. con­flict with oth­er pro­grams and so on.

As a result, our experts decid­ed to make a com­plete guide on how to change the key­board lay­out in Win­dows 10 and get rid of the above incon­ve­niences.

Changing the input language in the standard way

To change the lay­out in Win­dows 10, by default, you use the simul­ta­ne­ous press­ing of the Alt + Shift or Win + space keys. In the first case, switch­ing occurs instant­ly, and when using the sec­ond option, an aux­il­iary win­dow for con­firm­ing the choice of lan­guage appears. It is still pos­si­ble to change the lay­out by click­ing LMB on the cor­re­spond­ing icon in the Win­dows sys­tem tray near the clock.

Change keyboard shortcuts

Most users get used to cer­tain key com­bi­na­tions dur­ing their work, as a result of which they feel dis­com­fort when work­ing with stan­dard OS set­tings. In view of this, Microsoft devel­op­ers have pro­vid­ed the abil­i­ty to change the options for chang­ing dif­fer­ent input lan­guages.

In dif­fer­ent ver­sions of Win­dows 10, the algo­rithm for replac­ing lan­guage set­tings is dif­fer­ent, so start­ing from Octo­ber 2018, the sequence of actions will be as fol­lows:

1. open “Set­tings” by query­ing the “Start” search bar or by press­ing “Win + I”;

2. select Devices — “Input” — “Advanced key­board set­tings” — “Lan­guage bar set­tings”;

3. go to the tab “Key­board switch­ing” — “Change key­board short­cut” and spec­i­fy the pre­ferred set­tings that will be applied with­out reboot­ing.

In ear­li­er ver­sions of the tenth gen­er­a­tion of Win­dows, you must do the fol­low­ing:

1. open the “Con­trol Pan­el” through the search bar of the “Start” menu;

2. select “Large icons” next to the inscrip­tion “View”;

3. click “Lan­guage” — “Advanced options” — “Change lan­guage bar short­cuts” — tab “Key­board switch­ing” — “Change key­board short­cut” and make the required set­tings.

Accord­ing to our experts, a small flaw in Win­dows is the need to sep­a­rate­ly change the lay­out method on the lock screen, for which you should:

1. - go to the “Con­trol Pan­el” in the above way or by exe­cut­ing the “con­trol” com­mand after press­ing “Win + R”;

2. - click on the left “Hours and region” — “Region­al stan­dards” — tab “Advanced”;

3. - click “Copy set­tings”, where in the win­dow that opens below you will need to check the box­es “Wel­come screen and sys­tem accounts” and “New user accounts”, and then click “OK” to con­firm the changes.

This option can still be enabled using the com­mand line called “Win + R” — enter “cmd”, after which you need to exe­cute the com­mand — reg add “HKU.DEFAULTKeyboard Lay­out­Tog­gle” /v Hotkey /t REG_SZ /d 2 /f, where the expres­sion “d2” cor­re­sponds to the com­bi­na­tion “Ctrl+Shift”, and when it is changed to “d1”, the lay­out will be changed by press­ing “Alt+Shift”.

Enabling automatic layout switching

Some­times users for­get to switch the lan­guage, for exam­ple, when chat­ting with some­one in Euro­pean and edit­ing some Eng­lish text at the same time, which can lead to the inevitabil­i­ty of redo­ing a large amount of work, so, in our opin­ion, it is bet­ter to imme­di­ate­ly acti­vate the auto­mat­ic lay­out switch­ing func­tion in dif­fer­ent win­dows, which is dis­abled by default.

To do this, find “Advanced key­board options” through the “Options” sec­tion, as described above, and check the box “Allow me to select an input method for each appli­ca­tion win­dow.”

Adding layouts and languages

At first, it is worth­while to imme­di­ate­ly under­stand the dif­fer­ence between the con­cepts of “lan­guage” and “lay­out”, which can be dif­fer­ent for the same lan­guage. This is due to the fact that, for exam­ple, in EU, a sequence like “qwer­ty” is main­ly used, and in oth­er regions the arrange­ment of let­ters on the key­board can dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly, which will not allow a per­son to com­fort­ably cope with typ­ing. For this rea­son, Win­dows has the abil­i­ty to install dif­fer­ent lan­guages ​​and lay­outs, which will require the fol­low­ing steps:

1. click on the lan­guage bar in the sys­tem tray and click “lan­guage set­tings”;

2. select the lan­guage to install from the list by click­ing “Add lan­guage” — “Next”;

3. uncheck the “Set as Win­dows inter­face lan­guage” check­box if there is no need to use this option.

The new lay­out will now be avail­able along with the oth­ers installed pre­vi­ous­ly, but it is also pos­si­ble to add oth­er key­board lay­outs by click­ing on the “Set­tings” item under the lay­out name in the list, after which you need to mark the desired option and click “+Add Key­board”.

Screen keyboard

This inter­nal pro­gram is very often used when a hard­ware key­board breaks down, as well as in case of sus­pi­cion of mal­ware activ­i­ty in the sys­tem that can read pass­words and oth­er impor­tant infor­ma­tion dur­ing phys­i­cal typ­ing. In addi­tion, this option is now used to sup­port oper­a­tion through the touch screens of tablets and smart­phones.

There are sev­er­al algo­rithms for launch­ing the on-screen key­board, includ­ing:

1. call­ing the “Taskbar” con­text menu by press­ing RMB at the very bot­tom of the desk­top, where you need to click “Show touch key­board but­ton”, which will appear near the sys­tem clock;

2. go to the “Start” menu — “Set­tings” — “Acces­si­bil­i­ty” — “Key­board” — trans­late the slid­er “Enable the on-screen key­board”;

3. search query start menu;

4. press­ing “Win + R” with the com­mand “osk”;

5. exe­cut­ing the “Win + U” com­bi­na­tion.

Accord­ing to the experts of our pub­li­ca­tion, if this pro­gram does not start using the above meth­ods, then its ser­vice is prob­a­bly dis­abled, and there­fore you will need to run “services.msc” through “Win + R” and find the “Touch Key­board Ser­vice” in the list to enable it. If, on the con­trary, the on-screen key­board appears after any key­strokes, you need to go to the “Ease of Access Cen­ter” — “Using a com­put­er with­out a mouse” sec­tion through the “Start” search box, and then uncheck “Use on-screen key­board”.

Troubleshooting Language Bar Issues

Users some­times face some dif­fi­cul­ties when switch­ing lay­outs, as a result of which we decid­ed to talk about the most com­mon such com­pli­ca­tions.

If the lan­guage bar icon sud­den­ly dis­ap­peared, then it is advis­able to go along the path “Start” — “Set­tings” — “Per­son­al­iza­tion” — “Enabling sys­tem icons” and set the slid­er “Input indi­ca­tor” to the “on” posi­tion. It also hap­pens that it is impos­si­ble to change the lay­out, as a result of which you need to turn off the “Sticky Keys” option in the “Options” — “Ease of Access” — “Key­board” menu, and also try to stop the “Touch Key­board Ser­vice”, as described in the pre­vi­ous sub­head­ing.

Accord­ing to our experts, the dis­ap­pear­ance of any of the lay­outs may indi­cate dam­age to the sys­tem due to a phys­i­cal mal­func­tion of the hard dri­ve or mal­ware activ­i­ty, so it is advis­able to imme­di­ate­ly check your com­put­er for virus­es, and you can do it for free on the offi­cial Dr.Web web­site.

Using Third Party Applications

Many copy­writ­ers and oth­er users who con­stant­ly work with large amounts of tex­tu­al infor­ma­tion often use var­i­ous third-par­ty pro­grams that great­ly sim­pli­fy the work­flow, among which the most pop­u­lar are “Mkey”, “Pun­to Switch­er” and “Map­Key­Board”.

The func­tion­al­i­ty of the “Mkey” appli­ca­tion allows you to assign a huge num­ber of “hot” keys and com­bi­na­tions to per­form almost any action, includ­ing switch­ing lay­outs, launch­ing pro­grams, man­ag­ing mul­ti­me­dia appli­ca­tions, reboot­ing, oper­a­tions with files, fold­ers, and so on.

The main pur­pose of “Pun­to Switch­er” is to auto­mat­i­cal­ly change the lay­out and translit­er­a­tion of words in case of incor­rect print­ing of texts. Imme­di­ate­ly after installing this pro­gram, it will work in nor­mal mode, so in the set­tings it is advis­able to turn off only the sound noti­fi­ca­tion as unnec­es­sary.

“Map­Key­Board” is suit­able for those who have a par­tial­ly bro­ken key­board or have a habit of using a non-stan­dard lay­out, as this soft­ware allows you to remap any keys. At the same time, to reset all actions in the inter­face, the “Reset key­board lay­out” but­ton is used, and the set­tings made will be valid even with­out start­ing the pro­gram after a reboot.

Thank you for your atten­tion, we hope this infor­ma­tion was use­ful to you!