How to remove or disable a default keyboard layout?

Question

Is it possible to remove or disable one of OS X Lion’s default keyboard layouts?

I’m using a custom keyboard layout, and now that I managed to set it as the system-wide default keyboard layout, I’d like to be able to uncheck or remove the built-in “U.S.” keyboard layout that came with OS X. Here’s a screenshot — note that the checkbox is disabled:

Screenshot

In OS X 10.9, this preference pane has been redesigned, but still there’s no way to “remove” the built-in “U.S.” keyboard layout:

Screenshot

Since I never use the U.S. keyboard layout, I’d love to get rid of it, i.e. remove it from the Input menu in the menu bar. How can I do this?

Update: Daniel’s answer doesn’t really answer this question, but it does offer some valuable information regarding this problem:

Mac OS X seems to require at least one keyboard layout that the system recognizes as a “Latin character” layout to be selected.

Assuming this is accurate information (thanks, Daniel!), the question could be rephrased as follows:

How to make OS X consider a custom keyboard to be a Latin character layout?

Update: I just came across something that might help.

I don't think "Latin" is sufficient. That is easily accomplished in Ukelele by setting the keyboard ID to Roman. I suspect your layout also has to be part of the AppleKeyboardLayouts.bundle in system/library/keyboard layouts. — Tom Gewecke, Mar 28 '12 at 14:30

score 40 · Accepted Answer · edited May 18 '21 at 01:05

40

For macOS 10.8 and later:

Change the current input source to your custom keyboard layout.
Open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist (in 10.9) or ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox.*.plist (in 10.8 and earlier). You can convert the plist to XML with plutil -convert xml1.
Remove the input source or input sources you want to disable from the AppleEnabledInputSources dictionary. If there is an AppleDefaultAsciiInputSource key, remove it.
Restart.

For macOS 10.7 and earlier:

Enable an input source that is not like your physical keyboard layout from System Preferences (I used Afghan Dari).
Run f=~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox*.plist; plutil -convert xml1 $f; open $f -e.
Remove other input sources except the temporarily enabled keyboard layout and your custom keyboard layout.
Log out and back in.
Remove the temporarily enabled keyboard layout from the property list.
Log out and back in.

edited May 18 '21 at 01:05

ruohola

1,008

answered Aug 12 '12 at 20:09

Lri

105,117

This worked flawlessly — I didn’t even have to try the backup plan in your last paragraph. Thank you so much! – Mathias Bynens Aug 13 '12 at 07:53
I just came across your http://osxnotes.net/keylayout-files-and-ukelele.html which offers a solution for OS X 10.9. However, it doesn’t seem to work for me. Here’s what the modified plist file looks like: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=7kWVxXqx After logging out and back in, the default “U.S.” keyboard layout is still enabled. What am I doing wrong? – Mathias Bynens Nov 02 '13 at 14:00
1

Aha, it does seem to work if you restart the computer instead of just logging out and back in (step 4). Thanks! Would you mind posting a new answer with a link to your resource so you can get the bounty? – Mathias Bynens Nov 02 '13 at 14:05
1

@MathiasBynens I edited the answer and my website. When I tried the second method again, I also needed to restart to apply the changes. – Lri Nov 02 '13 at 18:09
4

Works fine in OS X 10.9 if you restart your computer. However I had to remove also the temporary layout from the plist file and reboot using 'sudo reboot', otherwise the temporary layout was added back on normal reboot. – User366 Nov 05 '13 at 20:10
2

@Lri On 10.9 I had to delete :AppleEnabledInputSources:0 (the old default layout item) and the :AppleInputSourceHistory: dictionary (using PlistBuddy). No reboot, but only logoff necessary. – RolKau Nov 07 '13 at 22:50
The OS X 10.9 procedure also works on OS X 10.10 Yosemite. – Mikulas Dite Sep 22 '14 at 10:27
1

It doesn't work on Yosemite for me. Whenever I change the file in Xcode it just gets restored after a few seconds. Can anyone explain how you did it exactly? – Simon Perepelitsa Nov 16 '14 at 08:07
This method worked for me (OS X 10.11 El Capitan) only after I followed these instructions: http://superuser.com/a/869751/119669 – laughedelic Oct 07 '16 at 03:34
To what extent could that break the OS settings? I'm wondering if it could help with this issue: https://github.com/ergosteur/cf-keylayout/issues/26#issue-890510914 (Big Sur v11.3.1) – payne May 14 '21 at 04:05
Caution: This has worked well on my Intel Mac, but when I did this on a M1 Mac running macOS 12, the keyboard on the lockscreen would still the default ABC English one (which I hadn't even used). – ruohola May 25 '22 at 09:27
Worked for me on Monterey. Some actions may overwrite the just modified file so the trick for me was to change it from the terminal (using vim) and restart immediately. – martinkunev Jul 15 '22 at 14:45
3

It still works on macOS 13.2.1 Ventura (M1 Max) – Sergei Moskvin Feb 22 '23 at 18:24

score 8 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:45

It appears that you cannot do what you want to without some yet-undiscovered hack to the system. Mac OS X seems to require at least one keyboard layout that the system recognizes as a "Latin character" layout to be selected. This prevents your from being unable to enter your password at the login screen, etc. If you selected French, or Canadian, or another keyboard layout that the system recognizes as Latin characters, you can deselect the US layout.

Your problem is that your custom layout, while containing Latin characters, is not recognized by the system as a Latin keyboard layout, and thus cannot be the only selected keyboard layout. See this question (sadly lacking a great answer) for more information.

Note that a great answer to this question would answer your question also. Alas, my answer here only clarifies what the problem is, but I have no step-by-step solution for you. While such a hack may be possible, I see no evidence that anyone has figured out how to convince Mac OS X that a particular custom keyboard is safe to use as the sole selectable keyboard.

@Lri I suspect you are correct, but don't have the hardware to test that. Perhaps there's a reader of this site who can? — Daniel, Aug 09 '12 at 13:00

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 04 '13 at 21:29

For the sake of completeness, I filed this as bug ID #11137961 with Apple, and this is the response I got:

Bug ID #: 11137961
Bug Title: Allow disabling default (built-in) keyboard layouts when using a custom one

Engineering has determined that this issue behaves as intended based on the following information:

If the issue is just getting your keyboard layout recognized as ASCII-capable, the easiest would be to "bundle" your .keylayout, then your Info.plist can contain a "KLInfo_" dictionary that further describes it, like:
 <key>TISIntendedLanguage</key>
 <string>en</string>   # BCP 47 language string
I'd need to look into this a bit more, but it looks like TIS will scan the keyboard layout output to produce a USet and produce an initial idea of ascii-ness by whether it passes the following minimal test:
 uset_containsRange(uSet, 0x0020, 0x0021) && uset_containsRange(uSet, 0x002C, 0x0039) &&
 uset_containsRange(uSet, 0x003F, 0x005A) && uset_containsRange(uSet, 0x0061, 0x007A);
TIS will also examine the exemplar set for the above indicated locale and require a good dozen or so characters in the range [a-z].

For some suggestions on bundling a .keylayout, also see TextInputSources.h.

If this is still an issue, or you have questions regarding the resolution of this issue, please update your bug report with that information.

We are now closing this bug report.

Checked: my layout meets those criteria but it is not recognised as a possible default layout. So their engineers did not give the full information or gave incorrect information it seems. — User366, Nov 05 '13 at 20:14
@DmitryDulepov It is possible to use it as the default layout, but the button to remove the other still won't be activated; you would have to do that manually (see my comment to Lri's answer — RolKau, Nov 08 '13 at 00:57
@RolKau, yes but there are other issues later. If you have more than one layout, the new custom layout will not be available in some apps. For example, you will not be able to switch to it in the AppStore's search bar. At least, I could not. — User366, Nov 09 '13 at 05:55

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 04 '21 at 17:36

2

After moving my custom keyboard layout to /Library/Keyboard Layouts instead of ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts I could suddenly remove the US layout.

This also fixed the issue I was having where the keyboard layout would switch back to the US layout whenever I activated apps such as Mail or the App Store.

Supposedly this is because if the layout is installed as the current user instead of system wide then system apps can not use it, which would explain why it's not possible to remove the US layout from Preferences.

answered Dec 04 '21 at 17:36

Tor Arne Vestbø

141

This is the only answer that helped me in Monterey 12.2.1 – David Veszelovszki Feb 15 '22 at 11:02
I moved the layouts as suggested from ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts to /Library/Keyboard Layouts but neither did this change anything whatsoever, nor does this allow me to remove the U.S. layout from my system. Cann you guys explain what exactly you did to make this work? One clue also, I couldn't even delete the folder ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts
Thanks!
– Kortelly Zamatosh Sep 20 '23 at 11:41

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 29 '12 at 23:37

Here's another idea: A few years ago the bundle(s) for Apple Keyboard Layouts were much easier to edit, and this problem seems to have been solvable:

http://hintsforums.macworld.com/archive/index.php/t-71629.html

Perhaps one could still use the old editable bundle, if you could get one from an old system, in the current OS.

Mathias Bynens · Answer 6 · 2013-11-14T22:12:27.153

Apple’s response to my bug report, in which I was asking to make it possible to remove the system default keyboard layout if another one is selected through System Preferences:

Engineering has determined that this is not an issue for Apple to address.

Assuming this custom keyboard layout is bundled (.keylayout is inside a bundle like foo.bundle/Contents/Resources/foo.keylayout), then this could be as easy as inserting into the Info.plist's KLInfo_ dictionary:
<key>KLInfo_Qwerty</key>
<dict>
  <key>TISInputSourceID</key>
  <string>com.imgur.stack.keyboardlayout.Qwerty</string>
  <key>TISIntendedLanguage</key>  
  <string>en</string> 
</dict>
If this layout is needed system-wide (i.e. including password input) it could be installed in /Library/Keyboard Layouts/, rather than the same location in ~/Library/.

Please update your bug report to let us know whether this is still an issue for you.

If you have questions regarding the resolution of this issue, please update your bug report with them.

Please be sure to regularly check new Apple products for any updates that might affect this issue. Again, thank you for taking the time to submit bugs. We sincerely appreciate your input.

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Apr 11 '18 at 07:32

I have just had success removing the default layout on High Sierra using the following method:

Navigate to your Library/Preferences folder.
Open the file com.apple.HIToolbox.plist file, either by double-clicking it or by using open on the command line. This will make XCode pop up and it may want to install additional components.
Repeat step 2 until XCode is finally showing the file’s structure.
Locate the AppleEnabledInputSources node and unfold it.
Remove the entry for the layout you want to remove.
Save the file and quit XCode.

Now you probably need to log out or reboot to make this final. I had to reboot anyway for some update so that did the trick for me. Now I’m happily typing along in Neo at an agonizing glacially speed but not a single QWERTZ is in sight!

score 1 · Answer 8 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:45

I just came across something that might help. Here goes:

$ defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist 
{
    AppleCurrentKeyboardLayoutInputSourceID = "com.apple.keylayout.Dutch";
    AppleDefaultAsciiInputSource =     {
        InputSourceKind = "Keyboard Layout";
        "KeyboardLayout ID" = 1337;
        "KeyboardLayout Name" = QWERTY;
    };
    AppleEnabledInputSources =     (
                {
            InputSourceKind = "Keyboard Layout";
            "KeyboardLayout ID" = 26;
            "KeyboardLayout Name" = Dutch;
        }
    );
    AppleInputSourceHistory =     (
                {
            InputSourceKind = "Keyboard Layout";
            "KeyboardLayout ID" = 26;
            "KeyboardLayout Name" = Dutch;
        }
    );
    AppleSelectedInputSources =     (
                {
            InputSourceKind = "Keyboard Layout";
            "KeyboardLayout ID" = 26;
            "KeyboardLayout Name" = Dutch;
        }
    );
}

This is on my system, where my custom keyboard layout (named “QWERTY”) is the default. Note that the KeyboardLayout Name and KeyboardLayout ID properties refer to the ID and name at the start of the .keylayout file.

As you can see, defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist AppleCurrentKeyboardLayoutInputSourceID still returns the string "com.apple.keylayout.Dutch". Is there a list somewhere of the available com.apple.keylayout values? Is it possible to get such a value for a custom keyboard layout? ’Cause in that case, we could simply override the property.

Also, the AppleEnabledInputSources, AppleInputSourceHistory, and AppleSelectedInputSources properties all seem to ignore the custom keyboard layout, as their values correspond to the native OS X keyboard layout I originally selected when running Setup Assistant.

Another update: Aha! Seems like there’s another plist file from which we might be able to copy the settings.

$ defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox.*.plist 
{
    AppleCurrentKeyboardLayoutInputSourceID = "org.unknown.keylayout.QWERTY";
    AppleDateResID =     {
        smRoman = 2;
    };
    AppleEnabledInputSources =     (
                {
            InputSourceKind = "Keyboard Layout";
            "KeyboardLayout ID" = 26;
            "KeyboardLayout Name" = Dutch;
        },
                {
            InputSourceKind = "Keyboard Layout";
            "KeyboardLayout ID" = 1337;
            "KeyboardLayout Name" = QWERTY;
        },
                {
            "Bundle ID" = "com.apple.CharacterPaletteIM";
            InputSourceKind = "Non Keyboard Input Method";
        },
                {
            "Bundle ID" = "com.apple.KeyboardViewer";
            InputSourceKind = "Non Keyboard Input Method";
        },
                {
            "Bundle ID" = "com.apple.inputmethod.ironwood";
            InputSourceKind = "Non Keyboard Input Method";
        }
    );
    AppleGlobalTextInputProperties =     {
        TextInputGlobalPropertyPerContextInput = 0;
    };
    AppleInputSourceHistory =     (
                {
            InputSourceKind = "Keyboard Layout";
            "KeyboardLayout ID" = 1337;
            "KeyboardLayout Name" = QWERTY;
        },
                {
            InputSourceKind = "Keyboard Layout";
            "KeyboardLayout ID" = 26;
            "KeyboardLayout Name" = Dutch;
        }
    );
    AppleNumberResID =     {
        smRoman = 2;
    };
    AppleSelectedInputSources =     (
                {
            InputSourceKind = "Keyboard Layout";
            "KeyboardLayout ID" = 1337;
            "KeyboardLayout Name" = QWERTY;
        },
                {
            "Bundle ID" = "com.apple.inputmethod.ironwood";
            InputSourceKind = "Non Keyboard Input Method";
        }
    );
    AppleTimeResID =     {
        smRoman = 2;
    };
}

As you can see (AppleCurrentKeyboardLayoutInputSourceID), apparently custom keyboard layouts get values like "org.unknown.keylayout.FOO" where FOO is the name of the keyboard layout (as specified in the .keylayout file).

So, to let’s try setting all values to our custom keyboard layout, named QWERTY and with ID 1337 (specified in the .keylayout file):

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist AppleCurrentKeyboardLayoutInputSourceID -string "org.unknown.keylayout.QWERTY"

Sadly, this doesn’t seem to work.

Update: @Lri discovered a reliable method — see his answer.

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 01 '17 at 08:27

0

You can use Ukelele to mark your used layout as one that uses Latin script. Export as a bundle, install and then you will be able to delete the US one.

answered Jul 01 '17 at 08:27

Alexandre G

158

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 28 '12 at 15:20

Here is an idea: After making sure the keyboard id of your custom layout is set to Roman, make a custom AppleKeyboardLayouts.bundle which contains only that layout and substitute this for the one that comes with the OS. (I don't know myself what is involved in creating a .bundle)

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Mar 31 '24 at 05:36

I tried editing ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist, as the accepted answer suggests, but every time I saved it, it was automatically reverted back in a few seconds (my system is Sonoma 14.4 @ MacBook Pro M2). After many tries and fails and a long search, I managed to fix it using this method: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/458984/385704

In case the link dies sometime, here's a brief summary. You shouldn't make edits to com.apple.HIToolbox.plist while logged in to the profile which uses this file. Create another user with admin rights and edit the .plist of your main profile from that new user. Make sure to reboot your mac each time you change users (not just log off/on).

score -1 · Answer 12 · answered Mar 21 '12 at 13:14

-1

It can be done easily. First change to your custom layout (use menu bar Input menu), then deselect the U.S. layout.

answered Mar 21 '12 at 13:14

shpokas

441
3
8

My custom layout is the one currently in use. As mentioned in the question, I don’t use the U.S. keyboard layout anymore. – Mathias Bynens Mar 21 '12 at 13:18
I live without U.S. keyboard layout and had no problem to deselect it. The other customizations I have are non-default, non-US region and language. – shpokas Mar 21 '12 at 13:49
Can you deselect the keyboard layout that you chose when setting up the Mac initially? – Mathias Bynens Mar 21 '12 at 13:56
Yes, I can if I change region as well. – shpokas Mar 21 '12 at 20:42
See, that’s the problem. There’s always one of OS X’s built-in keyboard layouts that you cannot delete or disable. – Mathias Bynens Mar 21 '12 at 20:44
What exactly is your "custom keyboard layout"? A newly created one or one of OS X’s built-in? Could you just modify U.S. layout instead of using another one? – shpokas Mar 21 '12 at 22:16
My custom keyboard layout is a modified version of the built-in U.S. layout. – Mathias Bynens Mar 22 '12 at 08:43
let us continue this discussion in chat – shpokas Mar 22 '12 at 16:42

How to remove or disable a default keyboard layout?

12 Answers12

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