Skip to content

The Eclectic Light Company

Macs, painting, and more
Main navigation
  • Downloads
  • M1 & M2 Macs
  • Mac Problems
  • Mac articles
  • Art
  • Macs
  • Painting
hoakley December 21, 2018 Language, Macs, Technology

My Mac starts up in the wrong language or keyboard

Macs support so many different languages and keyboards now that it’s maybe not surprising that sometimes they can get a little confuddled. If you find your Mac starting up in the wrong language or – even worse – with the wrong keyboard, here’s what you can do about it.

Starting up with the wrong keyboard is often the more serious, as this can make it incredibly difficult to type your password in. If you’re keying in what you think is the letter Q but your Mac is using a traditional French keyboard and thinks that’s an A, that’s not going to help you much.

macOS actually maintains at least two separate property lists specifying the keyboard layout to be used. Both are named com.apple.HIToolbox.plist, and they are stored in /Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Preferences (if there is more than one user, each has their own in their Home folder). The first of those applies before you have logged in, and the second is specific to that user. macOS should try to keep them in sync if there’s only a single admin user, but can get confused.

Like all preference files, they are now maintained by a service which means that editing them directly is unlikely to do a great deal: the service will happily overwrite the files with what it thinks they should be.

Apple recommends that the most reliable way to set the language and keyboard to be used at startup, when there’s only a single admin user, is to use the Language & Region pane. If the language that you want isn’t in that list, click on the + tool to add it. Then drag it to be the top of the list, so it’s designated as Primary.

keyboard01

Selecting the keyboard is most easily accomplished in the Input menu, enabled in the Input Sources tab of the Keyboard pane. Whichever keyboard is set at the time that you shut down or restart should be used when you start up again.

keyboard02

This all gets more complicated when your Mac has more than one user, and the users don’t all have the same keyboard selected. You may also encounter situations where the primary language and keyboard for a single admin user may not get properly synchronised with those used prior to logging in.

If keyboard and/or language settings are confused or inconsistent, or they are different across two or more user accounts, use the command line once you have set the individual users up correctly. The command you need is languagesetup, and if you want to change the system settings, you’ll need to run it as root using sudo.

The command that you need runs something like
sudo languagesetup -langspec [lang]
where [lang] is a recognised name like "English", or an ISO-639 language code such as "ko" – either should be entered inside standard double-quotes like that. You’ll then need to authenticate with your admin user’s password.

You can get further information about this command using man languagesetup or languagesetup -h. ISO-639-1 codes can be found here.

Rarely, you may have problems getting these to work. You can then try:

  1. Trash the two preference files at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist
  2. Set the primary admin user’s language and keyboard correctly, as above.
  3. Use the languagesetup command to set the correct language.
  4. Restart.

keyboard03

Another useful workaround if you have problems getting the right keyboard to work for the login screen is to enable the Input menu (in which you can select the keyboard to use) to appear at login. Open the Users & Groups pane, unlock it, click Login Options, and there tick the box labelled Show Input menu in login window. You can then use that menu to select the keyboard you want for typing in your password.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest
  • Email
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Language, Macs, Technology and tagged input, keyboard, language, languagesetup, login, macOS, preferences. Bookmark the permalink.

Quick Links

  • Downloads
  • Mac Troubleshooting Summary
  • M1 & M2 Macs
  • Mac problem-solving
  • Painting topics
  • Painting
  • Long Reads

Search

Monthly archives

  • February 2023 (21)
  • January 2023 (74)
  • December 2022 (74)
  • November 2022 (72)
  • October 2022 (76)
  • September 2022 (72)
  • August 2022 (75)
  • July 2022 (76)
  • June 2022 (73)
  • May 2022 (76)
  • April 2022 (71)
  • March 2022 (77)
  • February 2022 (68)
  • January 2022 (77)
  • December 2021 (75)
  • November 2021 (72)
  • October 2021 (75)
  • September 2021 (76)
  • August 2021 (75)
  • July 2021 (75)
  • June 2021 (71)
  • May 2021 (80)
  • April 2021 (79)
  • March 2021 (77)
  • February 2021 (75)
  • January 2021 (75)
  • December 2020 (77)
  • November 2020 (84)
  • October 2020 (81)
  • September 2020 (79)
  • August 2020 (103)
  • July 2020 (81)
  • June 2020 (78)
  • May 2020 (78)
  • April 2020 (81)
  • March 2020 (86)
  • February 2020 (77)
  • January 2020 (86)
  • December 2019 (82)
  • November 2019 (74)
  • October 2019 (89)
  • September 2019 (80)
  • August 2019 (91)
  • July 2019 (95)
  • June 2019 (88)
  • May 2019 (91)
  • April 2019 (79)
  • March 2019 (78)
  • February 2019 (71)
  • January 2019 (69)
  • December 2018 (79)
  • November 2018 (71)
  • October 2018 (78)
  • September 2018 (76)
  • August 2018 (78)
  • July 2018 (76)
  • June 2018 (77)
  • May 2018 (71)
  • April 2018 (67)
  • March 2018 (73)
  • February 2018 (67)
  • January 2018 (83)
  • December 2017 (94)
  • November 2017 (73)
  • October 2017 (86)
  • September 2017 (92)
  • August 2017 (69)
  • July 2017 (81)
  • June 2017 (76)
  • May 2017 (90)
  • April 2017 (76)
  • March 2017 (79)
  • February 2017 (65)
  • January 2017 (76)
  • December 2016 (75)
  • November 2016 (68)
  • October 2016 (76)
  • September 2016 (78)
  • August 2016 (70)
  • July 2016 (74)
  • June 2016 (66)
  • May 2016 (71)
  • April 2016 (67)
  • March 2016 (71)
  • February 2016 (68)
  • January 2016 (90)
  • December 2015 (96)
  • November 2015 (103)
  • October 2015 (119)
  • September 2015 (115)
  • August 2015 (117)
  • July 2015 (117)
  • June 2015 (105)
  • May 2015 (111)
  • April 2015 (119)
  • March 2015 (69)
  • February 2015 (54)
  • January 2015 (39)

Tags

APFS Apple AppleScript Apple silicon backup Big Sur Blake bug Catalina Consolation Console diagnosis Disk Utility Doré El Capitan extended attributes Finder firmware Gatekeeper Gérôme HFS+ High Sierra history of painting iCloud Impressionism iOS landscape LockRattler log logs M1 Mac Mac history macOS macOS 10.12 macOS 10.13 macOS 10.14 macOS 10.15 macOS 11 macOS 12 macOS 13 malware Mojave Monet Monterey Moreau MRT myth narrative OS X Ovid painting Pissarro Poussin privacy realism Renoir riddle Rubens Sargent scripting security Sierra SilentKnight SSD Swift symbolism Time Machine Turner update upgrade Ventura xattr Xcode XProtect

Statistics

  • 13,825,990 hits
Blog at WordPress.com.
Footer navigation
  • About & Contact
  • Macs
  • Painting
  • Language
  • Tech
  • Life
  • General
  • Downloads
  • Mac problem-solving
  • Extended attributes (xattrs)
  • Painting topics
  • Hieronymus Bosch
  • English language
  • LockRattler: 10.12 Sierra
  • LockRattler: 10.13 High Sierra
  • LockRattler: 10.11 El Capitan
  • Updates: El Capitan
  • Updates: Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur
  • LockRattler: 10.14 Mojave
  • SilentKnight, silnite, LockRattler, SystHist & Scrub
  • DelightEd & Podofyllin
  • xattred, Metamer, Sandstrip & xattr tools
  • 32-bitCheck & ArchiChect
  • T2M2, Ulbow, Consolation and log utilities
  • Cirrus & Bailiff
  • Taccy, Signet, Precize, Alifix, UTIutility, Sparsity, alisma
  • Revisionist & DeepTools
  • Text Utilities: Nalaprop, Dystextia and others
  • PDF
  • Keychains & Permissions
  • LockRattler: 10.15 Catalina
  • Updates
  • Spundle, Cormorant, Stibium, Dintch, Fintch and cintch
  • Long Reads
  • Mac Troubleshooting Summary
  • LockRattler: 11.0 Big Sur
  • M1 & M2 Macs
  • Mints: a multifunction utility
  • LockRattler: 12.x Monterey
  • VisualLookUpTest
  • Virtualisation on Apple silicon
  • LockRattler: 13.x Ventura
Secondary navigation
  • Search

Post navigation

The Decameron: The flowerpot’s grisly secret
Collins and Copping: Words, paintings, and Charles Dickens

Begin typing your search above and press return to search. Press Esc to cancel.

  • Follow Following
    • The Eclectic Light Company
    • Join 3,138 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Eclectic Light Company
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: