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This trick I randomly came across while playing around with keyboard short cuts in Finder. If anybody has more than one input language with their keyboard, for example a Dvorak keyboard set up and a ‘normal’ keyboard set up, it can be quite useful to switch between the two inputs easily. I normally do this via the little drop down menu present in my menu bar, however there is a short cut which has some cool effects. In this post I am going to show you how this keyboard short cut works, how you can turn off the short cut for changing your input keyboard selection, and how to change it. This post is a small mash up of some small things, some of which may be new, some of which may be the solution to an existing problem of yours, which you may not know how to solve.

Changing Input Sources

If you want to use more than one language as you input source, for example the normal qwerty and possibly Dvorak, you can change this via the Language & Text > Input Sources option. Here you can select all of the different languages you want, simply check the tick boxes. This will add them to the list of input options for you Mac. It simply changes what comes out when you press a certain key. I used this when I knew quite a bit of Dvorak and was semi-useful, its probably better suited if you have the keys in the right place to start with.

Input Selection Short Cut

If you have more than one short cut it may be advantageous to switch between them. This can be done by pressing the Command + Space, if you hold down the short cut for a couple of seconds a selection box will appear. This can be used to scroll through the various selection. You can scroll either by the arrow keys or pressing the space bar, at all times hold the command key.

Although the image above is poor, it should normally appear in the middle of the screen semi transparent and looking awesome as these sort of pop ups do. If you press Option + Command + Space, it will cycle through the list backwards, however no input will appear. For the past I don’t no how long my keyboard input selection would randomly change without warning as I smashed my hands over the keys in random fits of rage. I never bothered to find the problem and fix it, and only realised today that this section of the System Preferences was causing it, as a result it can be quite useful to change it, especially if this is happening frequently.

Changing The Default Input Language Short Cut

Changing this short cut is simple, open up Keyboard in System Preferences, and select Keyboard Shortcuts. Under Keyboard & Text Input de-select the options at the bottom of this list. You could change them if you feel the need.

Conclusion

To conclude this post may not be useful to many people, however if you find that your keyboard input is suddenly changing this will probably be the problem. For ages my keyboard input would change and I didn’t know what was going one. I was really pleased today when I found the solution. I originally started using the keyboard input selector back in Tiger and haven’t looked at it since today, hence I didn’t notice the large keyboard short cut text showing the solution to my very mundane problem.

If you have a similar sort of story or a related tip, please leave a comment below.