Nico's blog

UK Keyboard layout on X applications on FreeBSD

As part of my move to a Lenovo Carbon X1 G6, I struggled to have the FreeBSD keyboard layout working as expected - i.e. UK English (I bought a UK QWERTY version): it worked in a terminal, but not in any X application.

Weird, as I had the exact same configuration in /etc/rc.conf as on my previous Lenovo T440p, i.e.:

keymap="uk.kbd"

I tried setting this in ~/.xinitrc:

setxkbmap -layout gb

but still no luck.

Then I thought maybe just configuring Xfce would be enough, and indeed it was!
I removed the default US keyboard, and also selected the left Windows key as Compose Key (so that I can input French accents when needed).

Just head to the Applications Menu > Settings > Keyboard, then "Layout" section:

Tags: BSD