Ubuntu – Static ordering of keyboard layout switching in Ubuntu 17.10 and later with GNOME 3

gnome-shellinput-languagekeyboard-layoutshortcut-keysxkb

Just installed Ubuntu 17.10 and it seems that the keyboard layout switching has changed its behavior.

In the previous version of Ubuntu (such as 16.04 Unity), if I have 3 different keyboard layouts (for example ENTHJA), hitting Super+Space would always cycle to the next layout in the same order (e.g. EN to TH to JA then back to EN).

However since Ubuntu 17.10, this is no longer the case. It cycles through the layout in the MRU (Most Recently Used) ordering. So suppose that the layout starts with EN, then I cycled to TH. Next time I hit Super+Space, it would give me EN instead of JA.

I tried to dig up and found that the culprit is the newly implemented DCONF settings inside org.gnome.desktop.input-sources and there seems to be no way to change this behavior.

So my question is: Is there a way to change this behavior to "static ordering" of keyboard layout switching?


(As a side-note, the new behavior is very bad when we have three or more layouts. Most of the time we as a user couldn't remember the MRU layouts, so layout switching is very inconvenient and much slower than already knowing what the next layout would be if static ordering is used.)

If there is no settings to change this behavior, where should I report this as a bug or a feature request?

Best Answer

As a workaround you may set an alternative keyboard shortcut like alt+shift to switch between keyboard layouts (see this question for reference: Ubuntu 17.10 can't change the input switching shortcut to alt+shift).

This shortcut should obey the "static ordering" you're looking for.


A feature request has been filed by OP here.