Made a free macOS menu bar app that fixes typing in the wrong keyboard layout

tal_alfi

I type in two languages and very frequently I don't notice that I am on the wrong layout, so I get a full line of gibberish before I notice. Got annoyed enough to build something. It keeps the right language ready per app and per browser tab, and if you mess up you double-tap Shift and it fixes the last thing you typed. I know layout switchers aren't new. The thing I couldn't find is that it remembers the language per browser tab and per chat on Teams (I work with a mix of English and Hebrew speakers), not just per app, so it sets the right one before you start typing. And when it still gets it wrong you fix it with one shortcut instead of letting an auto-detector guess for you. It's free (pay what you want) and everything stays local, no account. Not pushing anything, I just want to know if it's useful and what's missing. I'd appreciate any feedback!! Site's here (with a demo...) : https://flickey.site

holistio

I type in 4 languages on my Mac (en/hu/de/ro) and 7 on my iPhone (+ru/cn/fr) So I guess I'm pretty much the perfect audience here. Every time I code I get mildly enraged by having typed é or ö instead of a semicolon. Will definitely give this a go. I really like the (lack of a) business model, too, I hope some people will appreciate your efforts. This was probably my favourite bit. All these small apps that somehow need to figure out an extra feature just so that they can upsell. I get it, but it's still annoying. This ones gives off the goold old vibes of "I scratched my own itch and I'm sharing". Appreciate it!

Scoundreller

Yeah I want this. I acquired a keyboard for a language I’m learning and was disappointed that I couldn’t physically switch my hands between keyboards to use the other’s layout. I thought the computer would be smarter, mais non.

_-_-__-_-_-

This seems like a giant security issue.

bellowsgulch

Generally speaking, it feels like there just aren't enough features for multilingual users on any major operating system. Fast virtual keyboard switching is nice on iOS, but basically everywhere else, it's hard as a bi- or trilingual user. So many times do I want live subtitles in multiple languages, at least two, simultaneously. Or vision capabilities to view something without translating a whole block of a UI or a webpage so I can read through missing intermediate to advanced vocabulary or typically native turns of phrase. Language support basically everywhere feels like it's implemented by Americans who can't speak anything else besides English, and look at products as things that only monolingual users use. Single-layout physical keyboards, etc.

josefrichter

Haha always wanted this, happens to me all the time. Apple Intelligence should be doing this automatically one day.

jhartikainen

Interesting, I would have expected macOS to have this feature because Windows has supported window-specific keyboard layouts for what feels like forever. I don't use my Mac much nowadays, but gonna have to grab this just in case.

rekoil

Awesome! Been looking for something like this for so long, thanks so much for making it! Tried it and it seems to work for the most part, but one app where it would be really helpful to me is Ghostty.app, specifically the quick-terminal, and it seems that it doesn't currently handle that, which is unfortunate.

cyberax

Punto Switcher for the new era! It works well for EN->RU, but not really for EN->CN (or RU->CN).

yreg

Oh, this is a great idea! I've never realised that the keyboard layout I want correlates with the active app quite a lot! Can we get per-team Slack support? And an option to set the layout for all the Xcode versions, including the ones that will be installed in the future (using https://xcodes.app/ ) Also, it doesn't seem to work with iTerm2 for me.

indrora

This is super neat for polyglots (of which I'm not one, yet) but one little thing: My partner immediately flagged that your demo (EN->HB) flips the cursor to be in the LTR position in the run rather than the RTL one. The most minor of things, but I now can't unsee it.

fortran77

Wow! I didn't think anyone on the mac cared about this. It was one of many annoyances that keeps me off that platform. On Windows, there's a setting under "Advanced keyboard settings” called “Let me use a different input method for each app window.” I can keep this turned on and if I'm writing a document in Word in עברית and I have my broswer open in English, I can switch back and forth and not have to hit WIN+SPACE to swap lanaguages.

jianfenglin

Windows system has a "Let me use a different input method for each app window" setting, and I really miss that after switching to Mac. Glad that someone finally made it. Nice website design by the way, I guess it's from some AI?

1123581321

Clever! For bonus points, fix my typing when my hands are misaligned by one letter. :)

nikolay

Is it just site vibe-coded or the whole thing?

rado

This has been my only serious complaint about the Mac for 20 years and fixed it with my first vibe Mac app a year ago: https://gitlab.com/spacest/InputLanguageKeeper (no keylogging) Does this app fix Spotlight getting current language instead of system default?