How to Add or Remove a Keyboard Layout in Windows 10

If you have installed the Windows 10 Build 17063 and up, you would notice that the classic Control Panel options is replaced with a new settings page.

This new feature allows users to customize their keyboard layout, which is more ideal if you want to change your display language. It also offers speech recognition and text-to-speech feature.

The Keyboard layout on Windows 10 gives you more options when you want to use more than one unit language.

You can also use alternative keyboard layouts and not just the usual QWERTY layout. There are different things you can do with the new feature in Windows 10.

So, if you want to customize your settings, all you have to do is to add or remove a keyboard layout.

How to Add a Keyboard Layout on Windows 10

Installing a New Language

• To add a keyboard layout, first, you need to install a language you prefer by going to Settings.
• Next, select Time & Language.
• Click Language.
• Go to the right side of the screen and look for “Add a preferred language” button under “Preferred Languages”.
• Next, look for the language that you want to add. Click on your preferred language and click Next.
• If you don’t want to install some of the language features, simply uncheck the checkbox next to it.
• Click Install.
• Your new language will be installed and you will find the language indicator in the taskbar.

Adding a Keyboard Layout

• To add the keyboard layout, click on the Options button of your preferred language (Seen in the first image above).
• Under the Keyboards section, click on the “Add a keyboard” button.

Removing a Keyboard Layout on Windows 10

If you want to remove a particular keyboard layout in Windows 10, you can do so using the following steps:

• In the Settings app go to the Time & Language section.
• Click Language.
• Next, look for Preferred Languages and click on the language that you want to remove.
• Select Options.
• Click Keyboards and select Remove.

Another option to remove a keyboard layout is through the Registry Editor.

• First, launch the Run dialog box by pressing Windows key + R.
• Type regedit to open the Registry Editor.
• Next, navigate to these registry keys to launch the list of keyboard installed.
• HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout\Preload
• HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\Control Panel\International\User Profile
• HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\Control Panel\International\User Profile System Backup
• In the list of Keyboard Identifiers, look for the key that you want to delete.
• Click to remove.

Changing a Keyboard Layout on Windows 10

You also have the option to change your keyboard layouts. However, take note that it will reconfigure some of your keys, which may result in creating a different character in the output. If you want to change a keyboard layout, press Windows key + Spacebar and change the layouts.

Did the article help you? Let us know if the methods above helped you add and remove the keyboard layouts on your Windows 10.