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Custom Keyboard Layout In Ubuntu: A Step-By-Step Guide



In order to use new keyboard layout, We need to tell X11 that it exists. In Ubuntu 14.04 X11 keeps track of installed keyboards in /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.xml file. Then lets add the new layout in it.




Custom Keyboard Layout In Ubuntu (or Just Linux :)



Go to the end of the section (search for ). Add the following after the last tag, where X is the file name of your keyboard layout in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols (in my case oe); Y a suitable short name; and Z an appropriate long name in one or more languages and aaa a legal three letter (ISO 639-2) language code (e.g. eng for English):


I am on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS. I have two keyboard layouts enabled in the keyboard options, English (US) and English (Dvorak). I have the option set to use the same source for all windows. When I switch to dvorak, some windows use QWERTY and some use Dvorak. Firefox and Spotify use Dvorak for a while and switch to QWERTY, while Terminal always uses Dvorak if I have it selected. I already tried uninstalling ibus (with apt) without success.


Fortunately, it is quite easy in X-11 based Linux distributions to create both custom keyboard layouts (for typing individual characters) and custom compose sequences (for building characters from their component parts)2.


The following shows how I customised my keyboard and compose sequences in Ubuntu. Ubuntu (or perhaps Gnome?) changed things between Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10, so you need to do things slightly differently depending on which version you are using. The same techniques should work in other X11-based distributions, although different distributions have the files in different places (see, for example, comment 8 below for Fedora 8).


  • This material is derived primarily from discussions at the following URLs: mikosmul/computing/articles/custom-keyboard-layouts-xkb.html,

  • -stumpel.nl/stestu.html

  • =209115



HiI try to added Persian layout on ubuntu xfce4 descktop and I select Win+Space from Change layout option but it changes at first from English to Persian but after that it does not work to switch from Persian to English.


I decided to try Xmodmap to remap my keyboard layout instead of XKB, and it worked perfectly. Creating custom layouts in XKB just seems to be too complex compared to Xmodmap, and I recommend Xah Lee's tutorial on the latter.Thanks for your help.


Most importantly, you can see keybindings according to your keyboard layout. For example, key binding Cmd+\ in US keyboard layout will be shown as Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Cmd+7 when layout is changed to German. The dialog to enter key binding will assign the correct and desired key binding as per your keyboard layout.


If you have many extensions installed or you have customized your keyboard shortcuts, you can sometimes have keybinding conflicts where the same keyboard shortcut is mapped to several commands. This can result in confusing behavior, especially if different keybindings are going in and out of scope as you move around the editor.


Different keyboard layouts usually reposition the above virtual keys or change the characters produced when they are pressed. When using a different keyboard layout than the standard US, Visual Studio Code does the following:


When editing keybindings.json, VS Code highlights misleading key bindings, those that are represented in the file with the character produced under the standard US keyboard layout, but that need pressing keys with different labels under the current system's keyboard layout. For example, here is how the Default Keyboard Shortcuts rules look like when using a French (France) keyboard layout:


Note: On Linux, Visual Studio Code detects your current keyboard layout on start-up and then caches this information. For a good experience, we recommend restarting VS Code if you change your keyboard layout.


Note: The following keys are rendered assuming a standard US keyboard layout. If you use a different keyboard layout, please read below. You can view the currently active keyboard shortcuts in VS Code in the Command Palette (View -> Command Palette) or in the Keyboard Shortcuts editor (File > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts).


A desire for custom keyboard layout is not very common, but it is in no sense unique. Usually, an interest to fancy keyboard layouts is inherent to multilingual persons. They are programmers, translators, journalists, (archeo-) linguists, touch-typists and simply people who do not have characters of their second or first language printed on the keys of their keyboards.


Long story short, I have gathered a body of texts, extracted characters' and character combinations' frequencies and used Dvorak's principles to compose (hopefully efficient) keyboard layout for Russian language (GNR). Since then I have phonetically mapped keyboard layout for English language (GNE) to it while preserving punctuation marks placing. After having gained enough practice in touch-typing uising GNR and GNE, the first variant of these layouts was corrected according to the actual experience to rebalance stress on the right and left wrists and different fingers. Very soon I could not believe I managed to live without my layouts and touch-typing wasting my life time at keyboard in vain. And I enjoyed my layouts happily ever after.


In general, you have to prepare your keyboard layout description file and to add your keyboard layout to the list of available keyboard layouts. The second feat requires superuser privileges. Detailed instructions follow.


Be warned however, that base.lst, evdev.lst, evdev.xml and base.xml may be sometimes overwritten during distribution version upgrades. As a result your keyboard layout may disappear from selection list.


I'm afraid that left ctrl can not be used at 3rd level switch just because it is used in many shortcuts already.They say, predetermined list of possible 3rd level choosers is configured in evdel.lst file. askubuntu.com How to make Left Ctrl (while pressed) as key to choose 3rd level (Alt Gr key) keyboard-layout asked by Phuoc on 02:04AM - 27 Dec 16 UTC


Dear Eugene,I'm trying to write a keyboard layout for Ubuntu, but I'm working on Windows. I have the question: Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator allows to set two or more consecutive characters for one key. Is it possible in Linux? And if so, how to write it? Can I just list it with a space?Thanks


Surely, one can assign several character codes to the same keyboard key and invoke them by pressing 1, 2, 3, 5 level modifiers together with this key. No cycling through all the possible characters by pressing an extra special key though.A good introduction to the Linux keyboard can be found here and here askubuntu.com What does "Key to choose 5th level" in gnome-keyboard-properties do? gnome, keyboard, xmodmap asked by sup on 09:41AM - 08 May 11 UTC


Hi my community, I'm newbie over Ubuntu, so about this topic, that's my case,I'm latin developer who live in germany so I need use the german keyboard and in order of that i thank that jave a custom keyboard shall a excellen idea, wiht my windows 10, and the win sw called KLC was easy, now here in Linux Ubuntu will be a challeger, My german keyboar layout changes that i need are:


Keyboard mappings (keymaps), console fonts and console maps for the Linux console are provided by the kbd package (a dependency of systemd), which also provides many low-level tools for managing text console. In addition, systemd also provides the localectl tool, which can control both the system locale and keyboard layout settings for both the console and Xorg.


The keymap files are stored in the /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/ directory tree. Usually one keymap file corresponds to one keyboard layout (the include statement can be used to share common parts and a keymap file can contain multiple layouts with some key combination used for switching). For more details see keymaps(5).


As a developer I prefer to use the us intl. keyboard layout as many symboles are positioned better than on the german keyboard layout.But on the other side I also have to write texts in german and I need to have access to all german umlauts and symboles. Unfortunately there is no layout that suited in all details to my daily needs. Here comes the ability to define a custom keyboard layout in account.


In my case I started to use the variant alt-intl for the us intl. keyboard layout. This variant already defines the german umlauts. But it does not define a key combo for e.g. the umlaut ß and also a key combo for the paragraph sign and cent sign was missing.


Keyboard Layouts are not particularly great for coding by default. Special characters need shift to be pressed or are not easily reachable. This is especially true on non-english (like german) layouts. The brackets, for example, are very pleasantly placed on the 4th row (counting from the bottom) of an EN-keyboard layout, but you need to press AltGr + 8 or 9 on an DE-keyboard layout. Not so great. See here how set-up a custom keyboard on Linux (Ubuntu).


I was creating my custom keyboard layout(custom tamil keyboard layout) in Ubuntu 12.04 platform based on this post. I edited the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/in as specified in the post with my custom layout. The sample layout mapping is attached below:


When the physical keyboard on the host is not the same as the keyboard layout configured on the guest. For example, if the guest is configured to use an international keyboard, but the host keyboard is US English.


Custom keyboard layouts that you save are stored as an XML file on the host, in the keyboardLayouts folder in the global configuration data directory. For example, in $HOME/.config/VirtualBox/keyboardLayouts on a Linux host. 2ff7e9595c


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