Switching languages

Once more than one layout is enabled, there are four ways to move between them on the touchscreen: swipe the spacebar, hold the spacebar and drag through a list, use a dedicated key, or reach for Android's own input-method switcher. All four call the same underlying switch. Pick whichever suits your hands, because nothing about what a switch does changes. A physical keyboard adds a fifth: its own language key, or Ctrl+Space. See Hardware keyboards for those.

Swiping the spacebar

The spacebar has two independent swipe slots, each set under Typing / Gestures:

• Quick swipe on the spacebar: a swipe that starts moving right away. Defaults to Language.
• Press and hold, then swipe: hold briefly, then swipe. Defaults to Cursor.

Each slot can be set to Nothing, Language, Cursor, or Numpad. Which slot fires depends on when the drag starts, not on how far you drag. The reference point is the long-press delay, 300ms by default. A swipe that crosses the touch-slop threshold before that delay uses the quick-swipe slot, and one that starts after it uses the hold + swipe slot. Once the language preview or the picker list is up, any further drag switches language whatever the slot is set to. You are looking at a language chooser by then, so the drag does what it looks like it does. That never overrides your hold + swipe slot, because the chooser only appears on a hold when that slot is set to Language or Nothing (see below).

With exactly two layouts enabled, a swipe toggles to the other one. Dragging further in the same direction doesn't toggle again. Reverse direction to switch back. With three or more layouts, each 44dp of horizontal drag steps to the next one in your switch order. Either end of the list resists wrapping around, since a wrap costs 2.5× the travel of a normal step, so the boundary layout "parks" until a deliberate extra pull cycles you back to the start. (Two layouts of the same language still toggle rather than cycle. The count that matters is enabled layouts, not distinct languages.)

While a language swipe is in progress, a preview pops up above the spacebar showing every enabled layout as a row of chips: the current selection bold and highlighted, the rest dimmed. With more than five layouts enabled it shows a five-chip window centered on your selection instead of the whole list. Release to commit the highlighted layout. A tap with no movement always types a space.

The resting spacebar label follows The spacebar shows (also under Typing → Gestures), which offers Language (the default), Layout, or Both. In Language mode, a transliterating layout such as Avro always shows its own name instead of the shared language name. Avro, Probhat and Jatiya all display as বাংলা, so the language name alone wouldn't say which method is under your fingers. In Both mode, a transliterating layout shows the combined form instead, such as বাংলা (Avro phonetic). That's the same as any other layout whose name differs from its language. Otherwise, whenever two enabled layouts share a language, the label adds the layout name alongside it so you can tell them apart. The ◀▶ hint arrows need three things at once: Arrows on the spacebar on (the default), one of the two swipe slots set to Language, and more than one layout enabled.

Holding to drag through the list

Two things have to be true first: more than one layout enabled, and Press and hold, then swipe set to Language or Nothing. That slot is the setting for what a hold does, so pointing it at Cursor or Numpad hands it the hold outright and no picker opens. Otherwise the picker swallows the very drag you asked for, which is what used to happen. A fresh install ships that slot on Cursor, so this gesture is opt-in: set the slot to Language (or Nothing, if you would rather the hold only ever open the picker) to get it.

With that done, press and hold the spacebar. Shortly before the long-press delay would fire (250ms, or your long-press delay if that is shorter), one of two things opens:

• The inline preview from the section above, if you have four or fewer layouts enabled and the quick-swipe slot is set to Language.
• A scrollable picker list, once you have more than four layouts enabled, or if you've reassigned the quick-swipe slot to something other than Language.

Once the list is open, drag vertically to walk it one row at a time. The first bit of finger movement after the list appears is absorbed as calibration, so drift from before the hold fired never selects a neighbor by accident. Lift your finger after moving and the highlighted row is selected. Lift without moving at all and the list stays open, so you can tap the row you want.

Keeping the drag sideways: the carousel

Typing / Gestures / Language picker shape

The list has one awkward side. The swipe that switches language moves left and right, but the list walks up and down, so the moment you have enough layouts to need it the same gesture changes direction on you. Language picker shape offers a Carousel instead of the list. It is the same picker turned sideways: one strip of chips above the spacebar, centred on the layout you are typing in, with the rest scrolling off either end.

With the carousel on, a spacebar hold-drag walks left and right, one chip per 44dp, the same step the plain swipe uses, and the strip slides to keep the highlighted chip in the middle so your finger never has to chase it. Everything else about the hold is unchanged: the first bit of movement is still absorbed as calibration, lifting after a move selects the highlighted chip, and lifting without moving leaves the strip up so you can tap a chip or scroll it by hand. The 🌐 key's long press opens the same carousel.

The setting ships on List, so nothing changes until you pick the carousel. It only decides what the picker looks like. The four-layout threshold above, and the quick-swipe slot, still decide whether the picker or the inline preview opens.

A second setting takes this whole gesture away on purpose, the same way the hold + swipe slot does. Put characters into Spacebar long press keys under Typing → Gestures and the hold opens your own popup instead of the picker, which is what you want if you type in one language and would rather have your emoji there. The globe key and the spacebar swipe still switch language. Clear the field to get the picker back.

The last row, Other keyboards…, isn't a layout. It opens Android's own "Choose input method" sheet, which is how you hand the field to a different keyboard app entirely. It sits below the scrolling part of the list so it's always in reach however many layouts you have on, and the hold-drag walk skips it: it's a tap-only row. In the carousel it is the keyboard glyph past the divider at the strip's end, and the same rules apply.

Using the globe key

Not shown by default

A fresh install replaces the bottom-row 🌐 key with an emoji key. Every built-in layout defines that key, but the Emoji key instead of 🌐 setting is on by default, so it opens the emoji panel instead of switching language until you turn it off. Language switching still works the whole time. It lives on the spacebar (above) and the Languages screen (below) instead.

Layout & size / Bottom row keys / Emoji key instead of 🌐

Turn this toggle off in Layout & size / Bottom row keys to get the language key back. With it off, the bottom-row key behaves as a dedicated language switcher:

• Tap cycles to the next enabled layout (not language) in your switch order, wrapping from the last back to the first. Three layouts of the same language still count as three separate stops.
• Long-press opens the same picker the spacebar hold-drag uses (the list, or the carousel if you chose it), regardless of how many languages you have enabled.

Note

There's a separate Comma key opens emoji toggle (off by default) that replaces the comma key with an emoji key instead. It's independent of the globe-key setting above. Don't confuse the two.

To take the key off the bottom row altogether, turn off Show the 🌐 key in the same group. The spacebar gets its width. Switching still works from the spacebar, so keep a swipe set to Language if you type in more than one.

Reordering and trimming the ring

Languages & layouts

Every key and gesture above cycles through the same ordered list: your enabled layouts, in switch order. A fresh install seeds that list from your phone's own language settings, taking one layout per language it recognises, and then adds QWERTY. The whole list is capped at four layouts, so a phone set to four other languages fills up before QWERTY gets a slot. A phone set to Bangla and English starts with Avro and QWERTY. A phone set to English alone starts with QWERTY on its own and has nothing to cycle to yet. Everything else in the catalogue sits inactive until you add it. See Languages overview for how the full catalogue works and what's in it.

On the Languages screen:

• Your languages lists each enabled language once. Tap one to enable or disable its individual layouts, or to remove the language entirely (only available once you have more than one language enabled, so you can never empty the list).
• Add language searches the whole catalogue and enables an unadded language's first layout. A language with data to fetch asks about the download first (see Downloads & mobile data), and its Cancel backs out of the language too.
• Switch order appears once you have more than one layout enabled. Drag to reorder the raw layout list, so two English layouts (QWERTY and AZERTY, say) keep independent slots in the ring even though they're both "English."

There's no separate "recent languages" or "maximum visible" setting. The ring is exactly as long as your enabled-layout list, so reordering or removing is the only way to shorten it. Ring length changes behavior on its own at three thresholds: two layouts swipe as a toggle rather than a cycle, more than four turn the hold-drag gesture from an inline preview into a full list, and more than five shrink the swipe preview to a sliding five-chip window.

Switching from Android's system menu

Two things open Android's keyboard picker straight from the keys: the Other keyboards… row at the bottom of the picker list, and any key you set to Switch keyboard in the layout editor (it's in the Layers group of the action picker, see Custom layouts). Both put up the system's "Choose input method" sheet, which is where you change to a different keyboard app. If Android refuses to show the sheet, the keyboard opens the input-method settings screen instead, which reaches the same place.

The settings below are about the opposite direction: getting Android's own switcher to list this keyboard's languages. The System language switcher group on the Languages screen connects your switch ring to Android itself:

• List languages in the Android switcher (off by default) registers every enabled layout as an Android input-method subtype, so the system's "Choose input method" sheet lists each one and can switch to it directly. The two stay in sync either way: a switch you make inside the keyboard is mirrored out to Android, and a switch made from the system sheet is followed back into the keyboard. It ships off because the sheet prints a subtype's label where it would otherwise print the keyboard's name, so one language name in that row reads as if the keyboard were called that. Left off, switching stays entirely inside the keyboard and Android sees no subtypes at all.
• Show app name first (off by default, shown only while the toggle above is on) puts "WM Keyboard" ahead of the language in the switcher's label instead of after it. Android still controls which part of the label is bold or greyed; this only changes the text order.
• Select languages in the system settings (also shown only while the first toggle is on) opens Android's own list of this keyboard's languages, where each one can be ticked or unticked. See the callout below for when you actually need it.

On Android 13 and older you have to tick the languages yourself

Registering a language with Android and that language being switchable are two different things. Android only lists the subtypes it considers enabled, and if nothing has enabled any, it picks them itself from your phone's system languages, which normally means exactly one. That is why the switcher can show a single entry however many layouts you have on.

Android 14 added an API that lets a keyboard enable its own subtypes. On Android 14 and newer, WM Keyboard enables all of them for you and the switcher lists the lot with nothing to configure. Below that there is no such API. Open Select languages in the system settings. Tick each language you want in the sheet.

A separate, unrelated toggle, Remember language per app (under Per-app language, off by default), has the keyboard remember whichever layout you last explicitly switched to in a given app and restore it the next time you type there. Apps you haven't switched languages in yet follow whatever you last used globally, and a field that demands Latin input or advertises its own language still overrides the memory either way.

Forget remembered apps, further down the Languages screen under Language data, clears that whole map after a confirmation. The row only appears once something is in it, and its subtitle counts how many apps have a language pinned. The feature itself stays on, so apps start being remembered again as you switch language inside them.

Link romanized languages automatically sits in the same group and is on by default. It pairs a romanized language such as Banglish with the languages that share its script, so suggestions come from both. Adding a language only makes that language's own links, so a link you removed by hand between two languages already on your list stays removed. Turn it off and adding a language links nothing.

Options

Languages & layouts

Setting	Where	Default
Quick swipe on the spacebar	Typing → Gestures	Language
Press and hold, then swipe	Typing → Gestures	Cursor
Arrows on the spacebar	Typing → Gestures	On
The spacebar shows	Typing → Gestures	Language
Language picker shape	Typing → Gestures	List
Spacebar text	Typing → Gestures	Blank (live name)
Spacebar long press keys	Typing → Gestures	Blank (the hold opens the picker)
Show the 🌐 key	Layout & size → Bottom row keys	On
Emoji key instead of 🌐	Layout & size → Bottom row keys	On
Comma key opens emoji	Layout & size → Bottom row keys	Off
Your languages / Switch order	Languages	Seeded from your phone's language list, then QWERTY, capped at 4 layouts
Remember language per app	Languages → Per-app language	Off
Forget remembered apps	Languages → Language data	A button, shown once apps are remembered
Link romanized languages automatically	Languages → Language data	On
List languages in the Android switcher	Languages → System language switcher	Off
Show app name first	Languages → System language switcher	Off

Details & edge cases

• A fresh install shows an emoji key where you might expect the globe. It's the most common point of confusion with switching, and the callout above covers it. Switching itself is never disabled by the setting. Only the dedicated key's icon and behavior change.
• The globe key's tap cycles layouts, not languages. If a language has three enabled layouts, tapping the key visits all three as separate stops rather than skipping straight to the next language.
• With exactly two layouts enabled, swiping toggles instead of wrap-cycling. Piling on more drag distance in the same direction won't toggle a second time. Reverse direction and you start a fresh toggle. (The count that matters is enabled layouts, so two layouts of the same language toggle too.)
• A held-but-unmoved spacebar or globe-key long-press leaves the picker open for a direct tap rather than dismissing it, list and carousel alike. There's no need to drag precisely if you'd rather tap the language you want.
• Reordering affects layouts, not languages. If you've added a second layout for the same language (AZERTY alongside QWERTY, say), Switch order treats them as independent stops, and moving one doesn't move the other.
• A subtype that Android hasn't enabled stays invisible. Registering is ours to do and enabling is Android's, and before Android 14 only you could bridge the gap. If the system sheet lists one language on an older phone, nothing is broken. Those languages just haven't been ticked in system settings yet.
• The Android system switcher and per-app memory are independent settings. You can have Android list every layout as a subtype while per-app memory stays off, or the reverse. Turning one off doesn't touch the other.