How to display the current keyboard layout?

Question

Is there a utility that allows to graphically display the current keyboard layout?

This can be useful, for example, when writing in a foreign language and having the physical keyboard only indicating the local language (positioning of symbols, etc.). I would like to get a display similar to the following:

Answer 1

From the command line: gkbd-keyboard-display -l <layout>.

To see what your installed keyboards are (for example to find the layout code to use in the command above) use setxkbmap -query.

Answer 2

xkeycaps seems to do what you want, if I understand you correctly.

Answer 3

Selecting the current layout with gkbd-keyboard-display is possible like so:

#! /usr/bin/env fish
set layout (setxkbmap -query | grep layout | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f2)
set variant (setxkbmap -query | grep variant | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f2)
gkbd-keyboard-display -l $layout\t$variant

Or, similarly:

#! /bin/bash
layout=`setxkbmap -query | grep layout | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f2`
variant=`setxkbmap -query | grep variant | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f2`
gkbd-keyboard-display -l ${layout}$'\t'${variant}

Answer 4

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 5

Manjaro Settings Manager > Keyboard Settings

It looks like this:

Answer 6

In Gnome that is available already, although not for the currently selected keyboard (that simple feature seams universally absent). As shown here:

In Plasma and other desktops that seem to lack this feature, based on the previous answers, we can create desktop launchers for each keyboard in our keyboard layouts list. I use 4 layouts, so I have a list like so in Plasma:

In order to show my Romanian layout, I have created the file ~/.local/share/applications/show-keyboard-layout_ro.desktop with these contents:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Show keyboard layout ROMANIAN
Comment=
Icon=/home/cip/.icons/RO-Romania-Flag-icon.png
Exec=gkbd-keyboard-display -g 4
Terminal=false
Categories=Utility

4 stands for the fact that Romanian is 4th in that list. Different ones can be created.

To launch it I type in the applications launcher:

And it pops up:

Answer 7

To integrate this feature nicely in the Gnome environment, create the following file:

~/.local/share/applications/show-keyboard-layout.desktop

With the following content:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Show keyboard layout
Comment=
Icon=/usr/share/icons/Yaru/256x256/devices/input-keyboard.png
Exec=gkbd-keyboard-display -l "us(altgr-intl)"
Terminal=false
Categories=Utility

Press ALT-F2, and enter ‘r’ to restart the Gnome desktop if you use X11, or restart the session if you use Wayland.

To open the layout window, press the Super key (e.g. Windows key), and then enter the first letters of “Show keyboard layout” until the proper entry is shown. Finally, press enter.

The layout shown is hard coded. You can query the keyboard currently used with the following command and adapt the .desktop file accordingly using the following command line:

setxkbmap -query

Answer 8

Run tastenbrett. For me, unlike gkbd-keyboard-display and xkeycaps, this shows me dead keys as well as what keys do when pressing alt.

tastenbrett is the tool that is called when you preview a keyboard layout from the Kubuntu System Settings.

Answer 9

Current keyboard layout chart onliner (based on Raphael's answer but using awk and localectl):

gkbd-keyboard-display -l $(localectl status | awk '/X11 Layout/ {print $3}')$'\t'$(localectl status | awk '/X11 Variant/ {print $3}')

On an alias, using string literal syntax:

alias current_keyboard_layout_chart=$'gkbd-keyboard-display -l $(localectl status | awk \'/X11 Layout/ {print $3}\')$\'\t\'$(localectl status | awk \'/X11 Variant/ {print $3}\')'

Answer 10

Tecla replaces gkbd-keyboard-display on gnome nowadays ( e.g. this issue ). You can use it this way:

$ tecla fr
$ tecla gb