How do I get current keyboard layout?

Question

I'm wondering if there is any command line tool that returns the current keyboard layout.

I have XkbLayout set to us, ru.

Update: setxkbmap returns layout settings, not selected layout. E.g.:

$ setxkbmap -print | grep xkb_symbols
xkb_symbols   { include "pc+us+ru:2+inet(evdev)+capslock(grouplock)+terminate(ctrl_alt_bksp)"   };

It will return the same result no matter what the current layout is.

Answer 1

Maybe this is version dependent, but on my machine that uses setxkbmap 1.3.0 the following command works:

setxkbmap -query | grep layout

Note that depending on your need it may be useless to know only the layout : for instance the Dvorak variant of the US layout is quite different than the default QWERTY. The -query option of setxkbmap gives both the layout and the variant, as different fields :

$ setxkbmap -query
rules:      evdev
model:      default
layout:     fr
variant:    bepo
options:    grp:alt_shift_toggle

Answer 2

Yes THERE IS a command line tool that does what you want! I just discovered it 10min ago :)

Look at here: https://github.com/nonpop/xkblayout-state

xkblayout-state print "%s"

does exactly what you want (it doesn't output an end of line, so add ; echo if you need). run the tool without parameters for the help.

Answer 3

There is xkb-switch which is described thus:

xkb-switch is a C++ program that allows to query and change the XKB layout state.

https://github.com/ierton/xkb-switch

Or, following nozimica's suggestion, you could use:

setxkbmap -print | awk -F"+" '/xkb_symbols/ {print $2}'

From this thread on the Arch Linux boards: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=539406

Answer 4

Use this to get the code for the current layout:

$(xset -q|grep LED| awk '{ print $10 }')

This might needs to be converted to a form you want, like:

case "$(xset -q|grep LED| awk '{ print $10 }')" in
  "00000002") KBD="English" ;;
  "00001002") KBD="Thai" ;;
  *) KBD="unknown" ;;
esac

Answer 5

The answers so far did not work for me. I use setkbmap with two layouts english and czech so any -print or -query will always return the two. Grepping the LED status for xset -q does not work either since that one shows the status of all keyboard leds.

The best so far was to quickly write this small utility: https://gist.github.com/fikovnik/ef428e82a26774280c4fdf8f96ce8eeb

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

#include <X11/XKBlib.h>
#include <X11/extensions/XKBrules.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
  Display *dpy = XOpenDisplay(NULL);

  if (dpy == NULL) {
    fprintf(stderr, "Cannot open display\n");
    exit(1);
  }

  XkbStateRec state;
  XkbGetState(dpy, XkbUseCoreKbd, &state);

  XkbDescPtr desc = XkbGetKeyboard(dpy, XkbAllComponentsMask, XkbUseCoreKbd);
  char *group = XGetAtomName(dpy, desc->names->groups[state.group]);
  printf("Full name: %s\n", group);

  XkbRF_VarDefsRec vd;
  XkbRF_GetNamesProp(dpy, NULL, &vd);

  char *tok = strtok(vd.layout, ",");

  for (int i = 0; i < state.group; i++) {
    tok = strtok(NULL, ",");
    if (tok == NULL) {
      return 1;
    }
  }

  printf("Layout name: %s\n", tok);

  return 0;
}

and compile using

gcc -I/usr/include getxkblayout.c -lX11 -lxkbfile

Answer 6

You can use xkbprint to print the current layout.

For example to print the current layout as PDF use

xkbprint -color "${DISPLAY}" - |\
    ps2pdf - > current_keyboard_layout.pdf

which produces:

Answer 7

Another simpler approach, because of fixed positions of the output of the xset -q command, is this:

xset -q | grep -A 0 'LED' | cut -c59-67

It prints 00000002 or 00001002 depending on your current keyboard layout.

Answer 8

On newer systems, you can use

localectl status

It will for instance show you the following:

System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
       VC Keymap: us
      X11 Layout: us

Answer 9

Partial answer: On KDE, you can apparently get the current keyboard layout through the qdbus command:

$ qdbus org.kde.keyboard /Layouts getCurrentLayout
gb(intl)

I have several layouts configured, but it only shows the one that is currently in use.

Tested on Kubuntu 18.04 (qdbus version 4.8.7). There may be other d-bus based solutions for non-Qt environments, but I do not know about them.

Answer 10

With GNOME D-Bus you can do it like this:

$ gdbus call --session --dest org.gnome.Shell --object-path /org/gnome/Shell --method org.gnome.Shell.Eval  "imports.ui.status.keyboard.getInputSourceManager().currentSource.id"
(true, '"ru"')

Answer 11

Below gives me the current keyboard layout,

setxkbmap -query | awk '/layout/ {print $2}'.

Following script toggles the keyboard layout. I personally prefer this to grp:alt_shift_toggle and similar options.

LAYOUT=$(setxkbmap -query | awk '/layout/ {print $2}')
if [[ "$LAYOUT" == "ir" ]]; then
   setxkbmap us
else
   setxkbmap ir
fi

Answer 12

When using Sway, the output of setxkbmap was always us, although I had a different layout active.

I solved this using

swaymsg -t get_inputs | jq -r '.[] | select(.name=="AT Translated Set 2 keyboard") | .xkb_active_layout_name'

which accurately produces either English (US) or German on my machine.

The name of your keyboard may differ; get its name using swaymsg -t get_inputs.

The command above uses jq for parsing the JSON output of swaymsg.

Answer 13

From Goosfrabaa in the Arch Linux forums:

setxkbmap -v | awk -F "+" '/symbols/ {print $2}'

This works correctly here, and prints us(dvorak-intl) (displayed as "USA Dvorak international" in the GNOME keyboard selection menu).

Answer 14

You can query the LED mask value from xset -q command and then apply 00001000 mask to see if the primary or the seconday layout is in use. Example:

t=$(xset -q | grep LED)
# this will remove all trash in $t before the LED mask:
mask="0b${t##*mask:  }"
not_en_mask="0b00001000"
# Now we just apply bitwise AND to $mask and see if it is equals zero or not
[[ $((mask & not_en_mask)) == 0 ]] && echo EN || echo RU

Answer 15

You can use:

setxkbmap -print | grep xkb_symbols