How to Change Keyboard Layout in Windows 11?

There may be users who don’t know that only one keyboard layout is supported on the PC. Windows 11 also supports setting different keyboard layouts. You can add different types of keyboard layouts by adding and selecting new keyboard layouts through the Settings app. You can easily switch between these different keyboard layouts on the Windows 11 taskbar. Setting up different keyboard layouts is useful when you need to add foreign language-specific characters and symbols, such as currency, to your documents.

Three types of keyboard layouts

QWERTY: This is a 19th century typewriter layout that carried over to PC keyboards. It has QWERTZ and AZERTY variants in some European countries, but QWERTY is the most common layout.

Colemak: This is the second keyboard layout, and unlike QWERTY, it changes the position of the 17 keys. Most non-alpha keys have the same position in the Colemak layout.

DVORAK: This is a third keyboard layout that is faster to type than QWERTY. DVORAK is available for international keyboard layouts in Windows 11.

Users can add and switch between these three keyboard layouts through Settings. Next we look at how to change, remove and install different keyboard layouts in Windows 11.

How to Change, Remove and Add Keyboard Layout in Windows 11?

1 Add and Change Keyboard Layouts

Open your start menu and launch settings app.
Click the Time and Language tab.
Select language and regional navigation options.
Click the … button for the Basic Typing Pack listed in Settings, then select Language Options on the menu.

Press the Add Keyboard button.

Choose another keyboard layout on the menu.
Windows You can then change the keyboard layout to the added layout by pressing the +Space hotkey.

This keyboard shortcut opens the system tray menu below, where you can choose from different layouts added through settings.

2 Change Keyboard Layout Using Quick Settings

Click the Quick Settings system tray icon.

Press the Edit Quick Set button.

Click Add button and choose Keyboard Layout.

Select the Finish option.
Choose on Keyboard Layout option in Quick Settings.

3 Delete the Keyboard Layout

Turn on Language and Regional Options in Settings as described in the first three steps of the previous method.
Then click the … button of your typing pack and select the language option.
Press the … button to install the keyboard layout here.

Select the delete option.

4 Install a New Keyboard Layout

Press the Windows+S keys simultaneously to open the search box.
Type language settings in the search box.
Select the language setting in the search results.

Click the Add Language button shown directly below.

Type a language into the search box to find different keyboard layouts.
Select the keyboard layout to add.
Press the Next button.
Click Install to add a keyboard layout.

5 Add a new keyboard layout using PowerShell

Press the Windows+ keys simultaneously to launch the search tool S.
Type Windows PowerShell in the search tool’s text box.
Then click PowerShell’s Run as administrator option to the right of the search utility.
Enter this PowerShell command press Enter: $LanguageList = Get-WinUserLanguageList
To add a new keyboard layout language, enter the following command press Return: $LanguageList.Add(“language”)

Then click on this PowerShell command and press Enter to execute: Set-WinUserLanguageList $LanguageList
Press the Y keyboard key to confirm and continue.

Restart Windows 11 after entering these commands.
You can then switch to the new keyboard layout you just added via Settings.

Note that you need to use the actual keyboard layout language tab to change the language in the above command. For example, a command to add a French keyboard layout would contain the fr-FR language tag.

How to Custom Keyboard Layout in Windows 11?

You can set custom keyboard layouts with Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator 1.4.

1 Download and install the software

Download Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator.

Unzip the downloaded MSKLC.exe and open the MSKLC folder.
Double-click MSKLC.msi to install the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator.
Open the Keyboard Layout Creator application.

2 Set up a new keyboard layout

Click the “File” menu and select the “Load Existing Keyboard” option here.

Choose a keyboard layout to customize to match your current layout.
Click the Project menu and select Properties here.

Enter a name and description details for the custom keyboard layout and click the OK button.
Now you can remap the keys on the on-screen keyboard to set the new layout. Click a key on the keyboard to display a text box where you can enter different keys to change them.

When you’re done setting up your new keyboard layout, click the Project menu. Select the Validate Layout option here to validate.

Click Test Keyboard Layout to try out the new layout in the text editor.

3 Install a custom keyboard layout

If you are happy with the new keyboard layout, you can apply it by clicking Project > Build DLL and Setup Package.

Click Yes in the prompt that opens, asking to open the directory of the installer package for the keyboard layout.

Then double-click the custom layout’s setup.exe file to install it.
After installing the new layout, click Power > Restart on the Start menu.

Now, you can change your keyboard layout in Windows 11 according to above methods.