Determine OS X keyboard layout (“input source”) in the terminal/a script?

Question

I would like to determine the OS X keyboard layout (or \"input source\" as OS X calls it) from the terminal so that I can show it in places like the tmux status bar.

Answer 1

I am not sure of this answer, but it may be worth checking out. If you look in file:

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist

there is a variable called

AppleCurrentKeyboardLayoutSourceID

and mine is set to "British" and I am in Britain...

You can read the file in a script with:

defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist  AppleEnabledInputSources

sample output below:

(
    {
    InputSourceKind = "Keyboard Layout";
    "KeyboardLayout ID" = 2;
    "KeyboardLayout Name" = British;
}
)

So, I guess your question can be simply answered using this:

#!/bin/bash
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist  AppleEnabledInputSources | grep -sq Swedish
[[ $? -eq 0 ]] && echo Swedish