Determine OS X keyboard layout ("input source") in the terminal/a script?
Recently I had written a small console utility (https://github.com/myshov/xkbswitch-macosx) on Objective-C to do this. It's a lot faster than a script based solutions. It can to get the current input layout but also it can to set the given input layout.
To get a current layout:
$xkbswitch -ge
> US
To set a given layout:
$xkbswith -se Russian
Note: @MarkSetchell deserves credit for coming up with the fundamental approach - where to [start to] look and what tools to use. After further investigation and back and forth in the comments I thought I'd summarize the solution (as of OS X 10.9.1):
do shell script "defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist \\
AppleSelectedInputSources | \\
egrep -w 'KeyboardLayout Name' | sed -E 's/^.+ = \"?([^\"]+)\"?;$/\\1/'"
Note how \
is escaped as \\
for the benefit of AppleScript, which ensures that just \
reaches the shell. If you want to execute the same command directly from the shell (as one line), it would be:defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist AppleSelectedInputSources | egrep -w 'KeyboardLayout Name' |sed -E 's/^.+ = \"?([^\"]+)\"?;$/\1/'
- The currently selected keyboard layout is stored in the user-level file
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist
, top-level keyAppleSelectedInputSources
, subkeyKeyboardLayout Name
. defaults read
ensures that the current settings are read (sadly, as of OSX 10.9, the otherwise superior/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy
sees only a cached version, which may be out of sync).- Since
defaults read
cannot return an individual key's value, the value of interest must be extracted viaegrep
andsed
- one caveat there is thatdefaults read
conditionally uses double quotes around key names and string values, depending on whether they are a single word (without punctuation) or not.
Update:
Turns out that AppleScript itself can parse property lists, but it's a bit like pulling teeth. Also, incredibly, the potentially-not-fully-current-values problem also affects AppleScript's parsing.
Below is an AppleScript handler that gets the current keyboard layout; it uses a do shell script
-based workaround to ensure that the plist file is current, but otherwise uses AppleScript's property-list features, via the Property List Suite
of application System Events
.
Note: Obviously, the above shell-based approach is much shorter in this case, but the code below demonstrates general techniques for working with property lists.
# Example call.
set activeKbdLayout to my getActiveKeyboardLayout() # ->, e.g., "U.S."
on getActiveKeyboardLayout()
# Surprisingly, using POSIX-style paths (even with '~') works with
# the `property list file` type.
set plistPath to "~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist"
# !! First, ensure that the plist cache is flushed and that the
# !! *.plist file contains the current value; simply executing
# !! `default read` against the file - even with a dummy
# !! key - does that.
try
do shell script "defaults read " & plistPath & " dummy"
end try
tell application "System Events"
repeat with pli in property list items of ¬
property list item "AppleSelectedInputSources" of ¬
property list file plistPath
# Look for (first) entry with key "KeyboardLayout Name" and return
# its value.
# Note: Not all entries may have a 'KeyboardLayout Name' key,
# so we must ignore errors.
try
return value of property list item "KeyboardLayout Name" of pli
end try
end repeat
end tell
end getActiveKeyboardLayout
I am not sure of this answer, but it may be worth checking out. If you look in file:
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist
there is a variable called
AppleCurrentKeyboardLayoutSourceID
and mine is set to "British" and I am in Britain...
You can read the file in a script with:
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist AppleEnabledInputSources
sample output below:
(
{
InputSourceKind = "Keyboard Layout";
"KeyboardLayout ID" = 2;
"KeyboardLayout Name" = British;
}
)
So, I guess your question can be simply answered using this:
#!/bin/bash
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist AppleEnabledInputSources | grep -sq Swedish
[[ $? -eq 0 ]] && echo Swedish
This question led to the creation of the keyboardSwitcher CLI Tool: https://github.com/Lutzifer/keyboardSwitcher
Though similar to the already mentioned https://github.com/myshov/xkbswitch-macosx this has additional features, e.g. the list of Layouts is not hardcoded and thus can also support third party layouts (e.g. Logitech) and supports installation via homebrew.