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

ttal_alfi about 3 hours ago 11 commentsRead Article on flickey.site

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Discussion (11 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

tal_alfi•about 3 hours ago

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

rekoil•34 minutes ago

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.

jhartikainen•about 1 hour ago

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.

josefrichter•about 1 hour ago

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

holistio•about 3 hours ago

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!

rock_artist•about 2 hours ago

I wonder how dramatic it is within latin languages. as you mentioned on macOS you only use latin typesets. For those things most annoying are spelling mess ups, but I mostly use English keyboard and long press when I need to write things like papanaşi (ro) or buñuelos (es). (but I get those red dotted lines).

holistio•39 minutes ago

It takes some getting used to, e.g. ö used in both Hungarian and German is in two different places for the two languages.

I do ctrl-space a lot, but very rarely use the long press feature, mainly because depending on the active keyboard, the numbers to press are different and it hinders me from being able to type blindly.

Edit: I adore papanași.

Scoundreller•about 2 hours ago

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.

netsharc•about 2 hours ago

Huh, an idea would be physical buttons that a program listens to, and when you hit the key, the program sends a message to the OS to switch the keyboard layout to a particular one. So an Elgato Stream Deck or Razer Stream Controller.

So you'd have a button for each keyboard layout, and you'd just have to form the habit of smashing the key for e.g. Russian before typing a message in Russian.

For a more complicated solution, I suppose it'd be possible to detect which USB device sent a signal, and use this to detect which keyboard you're using. Maybe there'd need to be a workaround, like hitting Caps Lock on and off so the app has time to react and change the OS keyboard layout, before you type.

_-_-__-_-_-•about 2 hours ago

This seems like a giant security issue.

bellowsgulch•about 1 hour ago

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.