Use alternate keyboard layouts
Keyboards come in hundreds of different layouts for different languages. Even for a single language, there are often multiple keyboard layouts, such as the Dvorak layout for English. You can make your keyboard behave like a keyboard with a different layout, regardless of the letters and symbols printed on the keys. This is useful if you often switch between multiple languages.
Click the icon at the very right of the top panel and select System Settings.
In the Hardware section, click Keyboard.
Switch to the Layouts tab.
Click the Add button, select a layout under the By country or By language tabs, and click Add.
When you add multiple layouts, you can quickly switch between them using the keyboard layout indicator menu in the panel. The menu will display a short string identifying the current layout, such as USA or GBr for the standard English layout. Click the layout indicator and select the layout you want to use from the menu.
When you use multiple layouts, you can choose to have all windows use the same layout or to set a different layout for each window. Using a different layout for each window is useful, for example, if you're writing an article in another language in a word processor window. Your keyboard selection will be remembered for each window as you switch between windows.
By default, new windows will use the default keyboard layout. You can instead choose to have them use the layout of the window you were last using. The default layout is the layout at the top of the list. Use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to move layouts up and down in the list.
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See Also
- Enter special characters — Type characters not found on your keyboard, including foreign alphabets, mathematical symbols, and dingbats.