Adds a minimal block to i3blocks that shows the current keyboard layout, and allows switching keyboard layouts with a mod key combination.
I created this altered block because solutions I found online (e.g. using xkblayout-state weren't working). For instance, the keyboard layout name for US English and US English International were both US. I wanted a more fine grained display. It's most definitely not the most elegant, nor efficient, but it has the desired effect.
It's my first bash script!
- Place the block from
.i3blocks.confwherever you want in your own.i3blocks.confconfig file. - Place the
bindsymcommand fromconfiginto your own i3configand take note of the mod key combination--it may override a current combination! - Create (if not already existing) a directory called
binin your home directory, and place language and (optionally) language-printer in there. Make them executable by running:sudo chmod +x filename - Edit
~.bashrcand add the following line:export PATH=$PATH:~/bin - Log out and in and all should work.
Press mod+space to switch between keyboard layouts as specified in the language script. A notification will appear saying the keyboard layout changed, and the icon on the i3blocks status bar will display the currently active keyboard.
Default setup is US -> US International -> German
language: A script that switches between keyboard layouts based on what layout is currently active. Here you can add or take away layouts. To get the proper name, in the terminal switch the layout with setxkbmap and print the output with setxkbmap -print | grep xkb_symbols | awk '{print $4}' | awk -F"+" '{print $2}'. Use this for the string equality in the if statements.
language-printer: Optional script that prints things nicer. Essentially the same as language, but will just output the name of the current keyboard layout however you desire. This is what is displayed in the i3block. A cool idea would be to use fontawesome and place flags instead of text!
.i3blocks.conf: There are two commands:
command=setxkbmap -print | grep xkb_symbols | awk '{print $4}' | awk -F"+" '{print $2}'command=language-printer
The first command prints the layout the same way as setxkbmap outputs it. This is a bit ugly (in my opinion) because it outputs the layout name as, for example, us and us(intl). If this is fine, you can delete command=language-printer and uncomment the setxkbmap command. If this is done, you don't need to place the language-printer script in your bin. Otherwise, it will use the custom language-printer script. Also, feel free to set the label for the block if you desire one.
config: Fairly straight forward bindsym command. Take out the notify-send if you don't want a notification to appear when switching keyboards, change the mod key combination to whatever you desire (defaults is mod+space which overrides another default command), and change the signal if you already used 7.
Feel free to edit/make better/offer suggestions. I'm open to learn!