I'm using a Swedish keyboard on my Windows 11 laptop, with three languages installed: English UK, English US, Swedish. I find it hard to work out where various symbols are if I'm using a different language than Swedish, since the location depends on current windows keyboard layout.
If I use Win+Space to change keyboard layout to Swedish then I can look at the physical keyboard. The symbols on each key indicate what character I'll get if I press that key. Obviously. But when I've switched to English UK or English US, is there a way to get a similar picture of the current windows keyboard layout, so I can see what character I'll get when I press each key? So I can see for example what happens if I press the key beneath the Esc key, or press the key to the left of the Backspace key.
Right now I tend to either
- fumble around pressing all the keys I can think of whenever I want a
~,#,\etc - or I use Win+Space to switch to a language that I know where the key is, type the symbol, then Win+Space a few times to switch back again.
It seems like xkeycaps does this sort of thing in Unix land.
4 Answers
I use the KbdEdit software for that purpose.
It's paid software but does the job beautifully. Here's how English UK keyboard looks with SHIFT key pressed
I've used it for years to customize my keyboard layout (turn right CTRL into DEL among others)
Since this is a setting which will not change dynamically, I'd suggest you save the relative layouts as images on your desktop, or print them out on paper: this will be in any case much faster to access than to fumble around in Windows settings. Since you're using Windows 11, you could also create a snap layout with the image of the keyboard and of your favorite text-editing software.
You can find the relative keyboard layouts for US and UK in this Wikipedia article, from which I've copied the images for you.
US International keyboard layout:
United Kingdom Extended keyboard layout:
The Windows On-Screen Keyboard can show your keyboard layout and is also a means for entering keys via the mouse.
See the Microsoft articleUse the On-Screen Keyboard (OSK) to type.
The OSK is the biggest help that Windows can give. Otherwise, you could post it a a background image on your desktop, post stickers on the keys, or any other method you could think of and can do yourself.
4You need to open the settings from the bottom panel - or press the Windows key and choose settings. From there press language and time.
Scroll/go to language and region - you'll see the list on installed languages. Press the 3 dots next to your language.
Choose add a keyboard layout.
I apologize as my system is in Hebrew, but I think you'll do fine if you follow the above steps.
1
