keyboardSwitcher

List, show and switch OSX Keyboard Layouts from the command line.

A tool to set the current KeyboardLayout

Available Commands

• list: list the available layouts
• enabled: list enabled layouts (the ones you include in System Preferences)
• select "<layout>": sets the layout
• get: get the current layout
• version: print the version of KeyboardSwitcher

Limitations

For the "select" command to successfully run, the keyboard layout needs to be added in the OSX Settings app under Keyboard > Sources.

Possible usages

I use this in combination with control plane (http://www.controlplaneapp.com) to select the keyboard layout depending on whether my Bluetooth Keyboard is connected (-> US Layout) or not (-> German Layout) as well as via an Alfred workflow. For instructions on this, see below.

Installation

brew tap lutzifer/homebrew-tap
brew install keyboardSwitcher

Use with Alfred

Simply download the workflow available at https://github.com/Lutzifer/keyboardSwitcher/releases/tag/0.0.4

Use the "eng" and "ger" commands to quickly change the layout or define your own.

Use with ControlPlane

See How to use keyboardSwitcher to automatically change the layout when a bluetooth keyboard is present

Examples

list: list the available layouts

$ keyboardSwitcher list
Available Layouts:
  	2-Set Korean
  	3-Set Korean
  	390 Sebulshik
  	Afghan Dari
  	Afghan Pashto
  	Afghan Uzbek
  	Anjal
    (…)

enabled: list enabled layouts

$ keyboardSwitcher enabled
Enabled Layouts:
        Colemak
        Turkish - QWERTY PC
        U.S.

select: set the layout

get: get the current layout

$ keyboardSwitcher select "German"
$ keyboardSwitcher get
German

$ keyboardSwitcher select "U.S."
$ keyboardSwitcher get
U.S.