How do I change keyboards from the command line?

Question

How I change keyboard layouts from the command-line? For example, I want to switch from English to Hebrew. I'm able to do it from lightdm with the little icon in the corner of my screen.

Answer 1

You can find all the different keymaps in the following locations:

/usr/share/keymaps/i386/
/usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/
/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/

To change the keyboard layout (e.g. to Spanish) in the Linux command line, type the following command:

loadkeys es

For X:

setxkbmap es

To make these changes system wide, assuming you’re using Ubuntu, you can use the following:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

Answer 2

From terminal

English to Hebrew and vise versa with Alt + Shift

setxkbmap -option grp:alt_shift_toggle us,il

You can see all locale alias with this command

cat /etc/locale.alias

More info about setxkbmap in manual

man setxkbmap

Answer 3

Ubuntu 13.10 or Later

This works better then setxkbmap with Gnome/Unity keyboard layout indicator.

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources current 0

0 is the layout index (0 default or top layout). Layouts indexed starting from 0.

For easy use, create an alias.

Answer 4

setxkbmap us,il -option "lv3:ralt_alt,grp:alt_shift_toggle"

this command enable you toggle between English and Hebrew only through by right alt+shift and rescue you from left alt+shift.

Answer 5

There seems to be no standard CLI tool, but xkb-switch is a small open-source tool to do the job. Just tested it with Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS and it works flawelessly.

$ xkb-switch       # display current group
ua
$ xkb-switch -l    # list groups
us
ua
$ xkb-switch -s us # switch to a named group
$

This looks better than the other solutions because setxkbmap <name> ruins all options, and setxkbmap -layout <name>, while it preserves the options, it still fails to change the taskbar indicator nor the grp_led if set.

---

Caveat

If your ~/.config/kxkbrc uses LayoutLoopCount (e.g. it is set to less than the total number of layouts listed in LayoutList), like this:

LayoutList=us,ua,th,de
LayoutLoopCount=2
Options=grp_led:scroll,grp:rwin_switch,compose:menu,lv3:ralt_switch,
        nbsp:level2,grp:rctrl_toggle,misc:typo

then xkb-switch would only let you switch between the layouts in current group.

---

Invoke at screen lock

I noticed your comment:

Right before my screensaver turns on, I want to switch to English so that it will be easy to type my password when I get back in.

This was precisely my goal, so here's the answer:
To do that, you only need wrap it into a script hooking to dbus-monitor like discussed here.

Answer 6

Using gsettings in 18.04+ with Gnome, you can both add keyboard layouts and switch between them from the command line or from the keyboard layout switcher on the desktop.

1. Present keyboard layouts and options:

   $ gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.desktop.input-sources
   org.gnome.desktop.input-sources show-all-sources false
   org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options ['terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp']
   org.gnome.desktop.input-sources per-window false
   org.gnome.desktop.input-sources current uint32 1
   org.gnome.desktop.input-sources mru-sources @a(ss) []
   org.gnome.desktop.input-sources sources [('xkb', 'es'), ('xkb', 'no')]
   

2. Adding keyboard layouts:

   $ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources sources "[('xkb', 'us'), ('xkb', 'no'),('xkb','gr')]"
   $ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.input-sources sources
   [('xkb', 'es'), ('xkb', 'no'), ('xkb', 'gr')]
   

3. Changing the current keyboard layout from the command line:

   $ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources current 1
   

   As we now have 3 different languages, we have three choices from 0 to 2, with 1 being Spanish, 2 being Norwegian and 3 being Greek. Thus, setting current to 1 above makes Norwegian the current keyboard layout.

4. Listing all possible keyboard layouts:

   cat //usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst
   

5. Changing the keyboard layout with a keyboard shortcut:

   A keyboard shortcut is preconfigured for changing the keyboard layout. The present shortcut:

   $ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-input-source
   ['<Super>space']
   

A new shortcut can be set by using gsetting set, but take care not to use a shortcut that is already in use. To list all shortcuts in use:

$ gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings
org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings cycle-windows-backward ['<Shift><Alt>Escape']
org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings minimize ['<Super>h']
org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-7 @as []
org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-8 @as []
org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-9 @as []
org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-monitor-left ['<Super><Shift>Left']
...

Answer 7

For Ubuntu 18.04 + Gnome the other answers did not work for me, but this did:

gdbus call --session --dest org.gnome.Shell \
--object-path /org/gnome/Shell \
--method org.gnome.Shell.Eval \
 "imports.ui.status.keyboard.getInputSourceManager().inputSources[0].activate()"

The argument in "inputSources[0]" is the index of the keyboard layout, the same as for gsettings solution.

Found it on linux StackExchange.

Answer 8

I was able to find the best and most stable combination of xkb-switch, setxkbmap and ibus. IBus allows pinyin input and xkb-switch is stable, while setxkbmap returns back set of keyboard layouts.

This is important when switching directly to a language, for example Shift+Alt+1...4. Why not using only IBus? It gets stuck all the time because it requires a restart to bring keyboard layouts back to life after switching to non-latin keyboard layout. At least in FireFox, see I need to exit and restart ibus-daemon to make ibus-chewing work. #2319.

Disclaimer: Tested on OpenSuse Leap 15.3 xfce4 and xkb-switch is compiled from source

To make this work you should make script files with those commands and assign keyboard shortcuts to run them. Also you might want to disable Alt+Shift shortcut in keyboard switch settings to remove unexpected behavior.

So, here are my set of commands:

Shift+Alt+1 - switch to English:

killall ibus-daemon
setxkbmap us,ru,pt
xkb-switch -s us

Shift+Alt+2 - switch to Russian:

killall ibus-daemon
setxkbmap us,ru,pt
xkb-switch -s ru

Shift+Alt+3 - switch to Chinese Mandarin Pinyin:

ibus-daemon -d
ibus reset-config
gsettings set org.freedesktop.ibus.general preload-engines "['libpinyin']"
setxkbmap us,ru,pt
xkb-switch -s us
ibus engine libpinyin

Shift+Alt+4 - switch to Portugese:

killall ibus-daemon
setxkbmap us,ru,pt
xkb-switch -s pt

Also assign the following script to run on system autostart.

killall ibus-daemon

Answer 9

Just out of curiosity, why would you do that ? Why would you open a terminal and they type a command to switch your keyboard layout when you can do so by a simple keyboard shortcut ! Assuming you use Ubuntu , it goes as Windows + Space