In this guide, we’re going to show you how to change your keyboard layout in Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa. This will allow you to access the characters of another language and enable switching between multiple keyboards if you’d like.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to add and delete keyboard layouts
- How to switch between languages with your mouse
- How to switch between languages with a keyboard shortcut
Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
---|---|
System | Installed Ubuntu 20.04 or upgraded Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa |
Software | GNOME desktop environment |
Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Adding a new keyboard layout
- First, open the applications launcher and open the
Settings
menu. You can locate it quickly by just typingSettings
into the search bar. - Now that the settings menu is open, find
Region & Language
along the left side, and click it. - Click on the
+
plus sign to add a new keyboard layout. And then, to see the full selection of languages, expand the choices by clicking on the three dots. - If you don’t see your desired language listed here, click on
Other
at the bottom of theAdd an input source
window. It’s probably fastest to just type the language you’re looking for. In this example, we’re adding a Portuguese keyboard layout: - Select the keyboard you’d like to add and click the
Add
button. - You should now see that your selected keyboard layout has been added. Before exiting the settings, you can add more additional keyboards if you’d like, or delete existing ones by clicking on the trash bin icon next to each layout in the list.
Switching between keyboard layouts
If you have multiple keyboard layouts enabled on your system, a selection menu will appear in the upper right hand corner of your screen. Click on the icon at any time to select a different keyboard.
For even faster switching between keyboards, you can use the WIN+SPACE
keyboard shortcut. This saves you from having to take your hands off the keyboard and select a different language every time that you need to switch.
Conclusion
In this guide, we learned how to add and delete languages in our keyboard layout in Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa. We also saw how to switch between those languages, both with the mouse and a handy keyboard shortcut.