Time and Language Change Keyboard Layout in Windows 11

This tutorial is only the beginning of the story. Once I have selected one of these layouts, I want to see it. Meaning, I want to see a map of the keyboard. I want to see what will result when I press any given key. I have gone through the exercise of adding the French (Canada) language pack. I've also added the associated keyboard. But I am not seeing how to get all the accented characters. The / key gives me e with an acute accent. But French can put an acute accent on all the vowels. Also a grave accent on all the vowels. Also a circumflex on all the vowels. Also the cedilla under the c. I can't figure out how to get these characters. On W7, I had an alternative keyboard layout that I could activate on demand. For the acute accent, I could type apostrophe, which would not show up as a typed character. I could follow that with any vowel & the 2-key combination would give me the acute accent on that letter. The key to the left of the digit 1 acted the same way to give me grave accents on the vowels. And on and on. That is the keyboard layout I want. Where can I find it? And more generally, how can I display the keyboard mapping for any given alternative keyboard? Win+Spacebar switches from one keyboard to another. Great. After I do Win+Spacebar, how do I display what the keys will do? I've experimented a bit with the on-screen keyboard but I can't see how to generate all the accented characters. And I haven't found a tutorial or even a discussion on this topic. What I'm asking for seems pretty fundamental to making an alternative keyboard work, don't you think?

I found both a qwerty keyboard & an azerty keyboard for Canadian French. The azerty keyboard is completely wacky. All of the ordinary letters are shuffled around on the keyboard. It's very confusing. It has a handful of keys that show certain accented characters, more than what the qwerty keyboard has. But I still don't see how to get all the accented characters, even with the on-screen keyboard. There is also a Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard. It's about as confusing as the French qwerty keyboard. Strangely, there is no France French keyboard.

I discovered something called the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Constructor . . . or some such name like that. I thought if I can't find a ready-made keyboard package, I'll map the keyboard myself. This app is something put out by Microsoft, not some third party. I forget exactly what its name is because I ended up deleting it in frustration. It claimed to need .NET 3.5. I went through the rigamarole of making sure I have the App Installer. Then I got winget. Then I installed 2 or 3 .NET things that winget listed. .NET 3.5 is not listed. I thought if I got something even newer, it would include support for the older 3.5. (By the way, I was shocked to discover that W11 had not installed some version of .NET automatically.) But none of the things I got allowed this layout constructor tool to work. Its installer always popped up the error that it needed specifically .NET 3.5. Plus it's several years old & it mentions only Windows 10. I took a chance & tried it. It seems the thing predates W11 & it doesn't work on W11.

So I'm looking for some help with this.

Hello @WildWilly,

You can see if this below may help with the keyboard layouts for different languages.


Otherwise, you may be able to use Character Map (charmap.exe) to add characters.

The character map. I used to use that in W7 on occasion to grab certain characters, like Annoying'Я'Moi. But you have to agree that would be so painfully laborious as to simply discourage you from typing in any language with accents & diacritics. Diacritics. A word I was reminded of reading that Wikipedia article. Now that was a brilliant idea! I was trying to figure out the various Canadian & French Canadian keyboards as described in there, but I just wasn't catching what I was supposed to do. However, I scrolled down to the section marked United Kingdom (Extended) Layout, where there is a subsection named Windows. That is pretty much the jackpot. I will have to use the explanations there for the acute, grave, circumflex, & cedilla a few times before I get used to them & have them ingrained in my muscle memory. They are somewhat different from the key sequences I was used to on W7 but so be it. The key sequences with the keyboard named United Kingdom Extended QWERTY in W11 Settings are different but comparable to what I was using.

Except for the tilde. It took me a while to notice but the on-screen keyboard does not 100% match my physical keyboard. For example, on my keyboard, there is the letter L, To its right is the key with ; and :. To its right is the key with ' and ". To its right is the Enter key. On the on-screen keyboard, there is a third key between ' and " and Enter. It is marked with 3 characters: ~ ` #. Using RightAlt, or AltGr as it is shown on the UK alternate keyboard, & this third key, I can get letters with the tilde, like ñ. But I can do this ONLY with the on-screen keyboard. I don't think there is a way to get letters with tilde using my physical keyboard & Windows set to use the UK Extended keyboard. There's also a key between LeftShift & Z that is on the on-screen keyboard that is not on my keyboard. In addition, quite a few keys in the UK Extended keyboard have different characters from the ones printed on the keys of my keyboard. It's going to take rather a lot of practice to get this down.

I wish I understood what makes the Canadian French keyboards work. The Wikipedia article claims those layouts provide the full range of accents for French. But I couldn't figure it out. I suspect I would need a keyboard manufactured for that layout to make those software keyboards work properly. The UK Extended keyboard, while using certain different keys, isn't different enough from my ordinary keyboard to make it unworkable. There's just the tilde thing, & French doesn't use that diacritic, so that's minor.

Thank you once again. Is there anything you don't know?

I'm such a dweeb. The keyboard I want is US International. That's the one I've been used to using on W7. Where has my mind been?

Now here's something I don't understand. On Settings -> Time & language -> Typing -> Advanced keyboard settings, I have the box checked for Use the desktop language bar when it's available. Inside the Language bar options, I have the radio button set to Floating On Desktop. For some reason, Docked in the taskbar is greyed out so I can't select it. Why can't I dock it?

WildWilly said:

Now here's something I don't understand. On Settings -> Time & language -> Typing -> Advanced keyboard settings, I have the box checked for Use the desktop language bar when it's available. Inside the Language bar options, I have the radio button set to Floating On Desktop. For some reason, Docked in the taskbar is greyed out so I can't select it. Why can't I dock it?

Click to expand...

You can see if an option below may let you change it.

This is what I've had all along:





I'm wondering why I can't dock it. That option is greyed out. You can see in the first image that the language bar is floating on the desktop. I want to dock it but that option is not available to me. It's weird.

WildWilly said:

This is what I've had all along:

View attachment 80361

View attachment 80362

I'm wondering why I can't dock it. That option is greyed out. You can see in the first image that the language bar is floating on the desktop. I want to dock it but that option is not available to me. It's weird.

Click to expand...

You can't dock the language bar to the taskbar while it's on the Desktop. Looks like you'll need to use another option to change it.

I unchecked the 2 boxes on the Settings page, then moved off the page. Then I ran the Power Shell command to turn them back on. Then I navigated back to the Settings page where, to no one's surprise, the 2 checkboxes were checked again. But I just can't dock the thing. I tried unchecking the 2 checkboxes, then making the language bar hidden in the other dialog, hit Apply then Close. Opened the Language bar options again & the option for docking is still not selectable. Ran the Power Shell command to check the 2 checkboxes. Opened the options dialog again & the docking option is still not available. I turned the language bar off using the popup context menu on the floating language bar. I tried every combination of the checkboxes in Settings as well as in the Options dialog unchecking all the boxes, selecting hide, clicking Apply each time. Nothing makes that option to dock go to clickable status.

WildWilly said:

I unchecked the 2 boxes on the Settings page, then moved off the page. Then I ran the Power Shell command to turn them back on. Then I navigated back to the Settings page where, to no one's surprise, the 2 checkboxes were checked again. But I just can't dock the thing. I tried unchecking the 2 checkboxes, then making the language bar hidden in the other dialog, hit Apply then Close. Opened the Language bar options again & the option for docking is still not selectable. Ran the Power Shell command to check the 2 checkboxes. Opened the options dialog again & the docking option is still not available. I turned the language bar off using the popup context menu on the floating language bar. I tried every combination of the checkboxes in Settings as well as in the Options dialog unchecking all the boxes, selecting hide, clicking Apply each time. Nothing makes that option to dock go to clickable status.

Click to expand...

Just to verify, are you using the command to use taskbar language bar?

Sorry, I don't follow. I did all the various things in the Region settings to define 2 languages. Well, English was already defined as part of the installation. I added the French language pack. Then after fooling around with the wrong keyboards, that tale being upthread here, I defined the US International QWERTY keyboard for use in French. Then I checked the 2 boxes in Settings on the Advanced keyboard settings. Hmmm.... No, I actually checked those a few days ago. Then I went into the Language bar options, where I set things as you can see in my second image above. The checkboxes in the Settings make the language bar appear, right? You don't need to run any command to make the language bar appear, do you? You just enable the settings & it appears. I did manually turn off the 2 checkboxes on the Advanced keyboard settings page, then run the Power Shell command to turn them back on. I did that 3 or 4 times. In other tests, I also just manually clicked the mouse on those checkboxes. I never ran a command to turn on the language bar. I just ran your command that checked the two checkboxes. I don't consider that Power Shell command as turning on the language bar. I consider that command as nothing more than the euqivalent of clicking the mouse on 2 checkboxes. Running a command to turn on the language bar would look something going to a command prompt & typing taskmgr or resmon or dir. I didn't do anything like that. I just clicked buttons in the Settings.

The issue is that in the Text Services & Input Languages dialog you get by clicking Language bar options on the Advanced keyboard settings page, the top part shows 3 options for the language bar:
Floating On Desktop
Docked in the taskbar
Hidden
I have been able to float the language bar. I have been able to hide the language bar. The option for docking the language bar is always unavailable. It's grey. When I click it, my mouse clicks are not accepted. I even popped up the context menu on the language bar itself & closed it. That did not cause the Docked option to ungrey itself. Selecting Hidden & then clicking Apply does not make Docked clickable. Selecting Floating after it was Hidden & once again clicking Apply similarly does not make Docked clickable, but it does make the language bar float up again.

@WildWilly,

I was referring to the "Use taskbar language bar" command in option two below.

Oh. I had just been clicking the boxes to uncheck them. OK. Now I've run that command. It does uncheck those boxes, same as clicking them with the mouse. But the Dock option in Text Services and Input Languages, the dialog you get by clicking Language bar options right below the 2 checkboxes on the Advanced keyboard settings page, still is grey. Is there a Power Shell command for accessing that radio button? Or maybe a registry key?

WildWilly said:

Oh. I had just been clicking the boxes to uncheck them. OK. Now I've run that command. It does uncheck those boxes, same as clicking them with the mouse. But the Dock option in Text Services and Input Languages, the dialog you get by clicking Language bar options right below the 2 checkboxes on the Advanced keyboard settings page, still is grey. Is there a Power Shell command for accessing that radio button? Or maybe a registry key?

Click to expand...

That setting is always grayed out. You'll have to use the available options in the tutorial instead of that "Text Services and Input Languages" dialog box. It's the main reason why I didn't include it in the tutorial to avoid confusion.

I suppose that's hilarious. A setting that can never be used. It's a Dilbert world. Well I guess that explains why I couldn't get it to work. Thanks for being your usual diligent self.

Now here is something I can't explain. It's beyond Dilbertian. I was fooling around with these settings in Time & Language -> Typing -> Advanced keyboard settings. I turned OFF the checkbox for Use the desktop language bar when it's available. I unchecked the box. Poof. The language bar is now docked in my System Tray. Text Services and Input Languages still has the radio button disabled for Docked in the Taskbar. But it is docked in the Taskbar. Welcome to the weird & wacky world of Windows 11. Well, I suppose we've all known for a couple of decades that Windows is weird & wacky. So maybe I should have expected this. The solution to docking the language bar on the Taskbar is to specify you don't want to use the language bar. Of course. Why wouldn't it be like that?