i3-status-kblayout

i3-status module for showing the keyboard layout of your desktop.

Installation

Use npm to install i3-status-kblayout.

npm install i3-status-kblayout

Preparation

The module has to be configured in dependence of your current setup.

I run Arch Linux, so to make xorg toggle between Bulgarian (bg) and English (en) keyboard layouts, I had to add this to /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "system-keyboard"
	MatchIsKeyboard "on"
	Option "XkbLayout" "us,bg"
	Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
	Option "XkbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle"
EndSection

Then, you need to have an already installed and configured i3-status.

Configuration

It all works in the following way. Each layout, be it bulgarian, bulgarian with caps lock on, english, english with caps lock on, has a corresponding binary number (like 00001001) that you can obtain by setting the desired layout and then running

xset -q | grep LED | awk '{ print $10 }'

In order for this module to recognize and display the current layout on you i3-status, it runs the same command but all it gets is just the binary number. And you're the one that has to map this binary number to a string that will be shown in your i3-status!

To do this, let me walk you through the following example configuration.

Example

Go ahead and open ./config/default.json from the root folder of the project to have it when we need it. It should look like this:

{
    "codes": {
        "00000000": "EN",        
        "00000001": "EN 🟢",
        "00001000": "BG",
        "00001001": "BG 🟢",
        "undefined": "Error! Wrong i3-status-kblayout configuration"
    }
}

Note: This configuration file is part of the npm package itself. You should probably first fork it to make those changes to it, unless you want your config deleted on your next update.

Let's suppose you want to toggle between bulgarian and english. First set your layout to english and run:

xset -q | grep LED | awk '{ print $10 }'

This shall return a binary like 00000000

So in the default.json, that's why I've set "00000000": "EN"

Then go, turn on the caps lock and run the same command again. I've got 00000001

That's why, in default.json I set "00000001": "EN 🟢"

Go and repeat that process for every other layout that you need.

I recommend putting a 🟢 for the layouts that are with caps-lock enabled but the control is in your hands, put a 🎃 if you wish.

Basic usage:

blocks:
  - name: kblayout
    module: i3-status-kblayout

Problems

After a while of using this in my setup, I encountered the following issue. Sometimes this binary number changes (I guess it depends from the way you set your keyboard layout) to a one you haven't mapped. If this happens to you, just follow the already described steps of mapping a binary number to a string in the configuration file.