A X11/Wayland extension to quickly switch keyboard language layouts, that bypass the switcher popup and preserves the focus of the active window/widget.
Install it from Gnome-extensions site, or directly from GitHub with this command:
git clone https://github.com/ankostis/gnome-shell-quick-lang-switch ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]
and then ensure it is enabled:
gnome-extensions info [email protected]
gnome-extensions enable [email protected]
If the 1st command above reports that extension does not exist, logout and re-login (required for Wayland).
The language switcher popup by default takes ~0.7sec to appear, meaning that roughly 2-4 strokes are lost till the switch completes. This affects heavily users typing languages with non-latin based alphabets (e.g. Greek, Cyrilic, Arabic, Japanese), particularly when writting technical documents.
Furthermore, the popup messes with the focus of the active window/widget, (eg. IntelliJ's search popup gets closed, the active widget loses focus when the screen is shared, etc).
Hence the many relevant questions on the web:
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/972926/how-to-not-show-keyboard-layout-chooser-popup-when-changing-language-in-gnome-3/
- https://itectec.com/unixlinux/how-to-change-keyboard-layout-in-gnome-3-from-command-line/
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1123163/modeless-stateless-layout-language-switching-with-caps-lock-again-18-04-lts-bi/
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/969784/fast-switch-input-source-via-capslock-button-in-ubuntu-17-10/
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1084049/switch-layouts-with-one-key-on-18-04-bug/
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1200586/ubuntu-19-very-slow-f-keys-response-and-input-language-switch/
- https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/316998/how-to-change-keyboard-layout-in-gnome-3-from-command-line/
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/209597/how-do-i-change-keyboards-from-the-command-line/
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1056802/how-to-assign-caps-lock-first-lang-and-shiftcaps-lock-second-lang-in-ubuntu/
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1134629/manipulate-the-default-shortcut-superspace-for-switching-to-next-input-source-w/
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/998077/how-to-disable-the-keyboard-layouts-choosing-screen-in-gnome/
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1048805/how-can-i-switch-keyboard-source-quickly-in-ubuntu-18-04-gnome-shell/
Since gsettings
cannot reliably switch keyboard layouts both on X and Wayland,
some of the recipes above suggest binding a "custom keyboard shortcut" to a bash-script
performing the switch through dbus command, which bypasses the popup.
Unfortunately since Gnome-shell v41 (e.g. pushed downstream to Debian unstable "SID" roughly on Sept 2021)
dbus no longer allows calling method org.gnome.Shell.Eval
with arbitrary code,
due to security concerns.
The workaround to keep using dbus is to use a custom eval
method,
but this extension cuts to the chase.
Furthemore, since the extension does not define a custom-shortcut,
all keyboard customizations with gnome-tweak-tool
/setxkbmap
in X11 or Wayland
still work fine, on all Gnome versions.
A better solution would be to modify the original ui/status/keyboard.js
code
to skip the switcher-popup based on some new boolen preference (e.g. settable from Tweaks
),
as requested by gnome-shell#2945 issue.
If you want to switch between multiple layouts immediately, ie. without cycling through them, there is now (June 2023) Osamu Aoki's extension.
TIP: to facilitate typing while switching language, you may assign
the "Switch to next/previous input source" keyboard shortcut to a single keystroke,
like [SysRq/Print] or [CapsLock] keys.
-
Test the code:
-
Follow the extension's logs with:
journalctl -fg 'quick
. -
Install the extension locally:
cd ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions ln -s <your-project-folder> quick-lang-switch@loca
Note: Unfortunately testing the extension under Wayland in a nested gnome-shell, as gnome-shell docs suggest, does not work for the language switch key, because it is consumed by the outer shell; you must re-login to reload your changes.
-
Cycle with 3 layouts installed.
-
Enable, disable, re-enable extension and check that both the switcher popup and the immediate cycling work fine in each state.
-
Check both Xorg and Wayland.
-
-
Discover the latest version present in the Gnome-extensions site (link above).
-
Populate the Changes section, below, for the discovered
version 1
. -
git tag -sm '<msg>' v<latest-release 1>
-
git push origin main --tag
-
Archive the extension & include the commit-id as a zip-comment (the
-z
option sets the git-hash as zip's comment):git rev-parse HEAD | \ zip ../gnome-shell-quick-lang-switch-$(git describe).zip \ -z \ extension.js \ metadata.json
-
Upload it in https://extensions.gnome.org/upload/
-
Convert the tag into a GitHub release, paste the changelog and attach archive as an asset.
- feat: mark
metadata.js
as working also in gdm & lock-sreen. - Rejected by Gnome-extensions site,
because it
gdm
is not allowed on ego extensions since they are not going to be installed as system extension.
NOTE: the new code is incompatible with previous gnome-shell-44 and below. In case bugs are discovered, old releases would have to be bugfixed separately.
- FEAT/REFACT: revamp code for ESM modules, thanks to @hankjura (Yury thankjura).
- feat: old imports system wouldn't working on gnome-shell-45.
- refact: rename classname from
Extension
-->QuickLangSwitchExtension
- refact: use console.log/warn.error
- refact: cycle layouts WITHOUT checking conjecutive nulls. Maybe conjecutive null check was a relic from when their keys were non-ints (if that era ever existed).
- fix: had forgotten
return
in the 2 bail-out/error conditional branches, indeterminate action would have happen then (not really tested :-(). - doc: coallesce demand for this plugin in StackOverflow.
- FEAT: bind also
switch-input-source-backward
(fix #4. thanks to Yevhen Popok, @PotatoXPC) - FIX: previously, disabling the extension and reinstating the switcher popup
would brake repeated cycling, making it impossible to cycle further than
the immediate next layout, not without first releasing keys and re-pressing them.
- FIX: this could possibly also fix #5 crashing when disabling the extensein (can't be sure, couldn't reproduce).
- refact: refetch sourceManager on each cycie-call, in case it has changed (instead of storing it in a global var on initialization).
- doc: comments describe new method's provenance
- doc: enhance README from user feedback & SO; mention similar extension by Osamu Aoki, better for multiple layouts.
- DOC: add LICENSE file AGPL.
- DOC: describe implementation provenance and challenges in comments.
- version: 3.28, 3.30, 3.34, 3.32, 3.36, 3.38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44
- thanks to Oleg Arefyev's PR#9.
version: 3.28, 3.30, 3.34, 3.32, 3.36, 3.38, 40, 41, 42, 43
version: 3.28, 3.30, 3.34, 3.32, 3.36, 3.38, 40, 41, 42
version: 3.28, 3.30, 3.34, 3.32, 3.36, 3.38, 40, 41
version: 40, 41
It re-binds the 'switch-input-source'
shortcut:
- when enabled, the shortcut delegates to the direct-switching method
InputSourceManager._modifiersSwitcher
, and - when disabled, it the shortcut is restored to the original
InputSourceManager._switchInputSource
method. Note, it won't reset it to any previous monkeypatches.