change language from keyboard

I don't think that's possible. You might be able to write a script that would work.

Aleontiou13 wrote:

I want to change from one language to another using only my keyboard.

For that you do Control plus Space.

Not on my Macs.

BEfore el capitan it is Command plus Space.

Mac keyboard shortcuts - Apple Support

dialabrain wrote:

Mac keyboard shortcuts - Apple Support

A great example of incompetent Apple technical writing, where they just took the text from the Yosemite version without checking to see if it was still right for El Capitan. So Apple's own doc

is totally wrong: It says the shortcut for changing input sources is Command plus Space, when in reality it is now Control plus Space, and there is no longer any conflict with Spotlight, which remains Command plus Space.

Interesting. I am running OSX 10.11.2 and here's what I see…

I know I can change the shortcut of course. But, my question is, doesn't that just change the keyboard map? I thought the question was originally how to change the language itself.

Very interesting! Some users deliberately change Control - Space back to Command -Space because they don't want to learn a new shortcut, but this is the first time I've seen it that way from the beginning.

I read "language" here as meaning the input source. It's a pretty common question from folks who don't want to use the mouse to switch via the "flag" menu in the Menu Bar. I've never heard of anyone wanting to change the language of the OS menus and dialogues from the keyboard. You are correct that this would be impossible.

In my case, I only speak one language so it's not a feature I've ever used. The screenshot was from my 2 month old 5K iMac and my only explanation is perhaps when migrating data to the new machine, a old settings file was dragged along with everything else.

Beats me. 😁

I suppose I don't know if the user wanted all the menus etc. to change.

Anyway, Happy New Year.

DOes it stay that way if you do Restore Defaults?

I can't actually tell because I changed the shortcuts. It didn't switch back however when I chose Restore Defaults.

Tom, I have a similar, but slightly different problem. I'm running OS X 10.10.5 (still a bit wary El Capitan) on a MacBook Pro with a US physical keyboard. I write text in a number of other languages, but I prefer to keep the keyboard flag set to the US, so that the keyboard types what it says on the individual buttons--otherwise it just gets too confusing. Yesterday, however, the keyboard flag started switching on its own accord, perhaps somehow context-based, though I haven't been able to discern the pattern. Any ideas on how to revert to a status wherein the flag stays where I've set it manually without then trying to get cute, but actually becoming very annoying? Thanks

PS: my own hypothesis is alluded to in the following chat: OS X Yosemite: Change the language your Mac uses, where I'm specifically referring to the section:

Change the primary language: Drag a different preferred language to the top of the Preferred languages list. If OS X or an app supports the primary language, menus and messages are shown in that language. If it doesn’t, it uses the second language in the list, and so on. The language may also be used on websites that support the language.

Which implies that some of the apps/websites I use have suddenly stopped "supporting" languages other than English?

gruberg wrote:

I prefer to keep the keyboard flag set to the US, ..... Yesterday, however, the keyboard flag started switching on its own accord,

Have you gone to system prefs/keyboard/input sources and removed all the items except for US? If you do that, then it should not be possible for the flag to switch to anything. (system prefs/language doesn't really have anything to do with the keyboard layout).

control plus changes keyboard layout as far as I can see. I want to stick to my keyboard layout but get the spellchecking etc to change from US to in my case Swedish w/o me having to mentally move all parenthesis etc around. WIndows solved this quite some time ago. Any language, at least Latin, can be input with any keyboard - you just create and select the "pair" you want, and it sticks application by application. I've always consider Mac's to be more user friendly so there just has to be a way OR....