Lang Switcher documentation

Where to start

Everything starts with the tray icon. Click it with either mouse button, and the menu opens. Below are short answers to all sixteen questions; where there’s more to say, “Read more” takes you to the full page.

The tray menu: “Suspend”, “Settings…”, “Start when I sign in”, “Write to the author…”, “About” and “Exit”.

The basics

The first five minutes

An icon appears on the right of the taskbar, with the tooltip “Lang Switcher — active”, and a welcome letter opens: “Hello! My name is Panda.” Typed руддщ when you meant hello? Press Pause/Break.

Requirements and what’s not supported

Windows 10 version 1607 or later, or Windows 11, 64-bit. Windows 7 and 32-bit Windows aren’t supported, and neither are Chinese, Japanese and Korean layouts.

How to update

You’ll get a letter, and the tray menu will show “Version … is available…”. Download the installer from the download page and run it. It closes the program, replaces it and keeps your settings.

Moving to a new computer

All your settings, exclusions included, live in one file: %APPDATA%\Lang_Switcher\config.toml. Install the program on the new computer, exit it, and copy the file to the same folder.

Hotkey and layouts

The hotkey

The default is Pause/Break. If your laptop doesn’t have that key, or you need it for something else, pick another one: “Settings…” → “Hotkey” → “Set”. A single key works, and so does a combination with Ctrl, Alt or Shift, or a double Shift.

Three or more layouts

With two layouts, there’s nothing to set up. With three or more, choose “Pair” (“Source:” and “Target:”) or “Several layouts” — a cycle of up to eight, in the order you choose.

Capitals, Caps Lock and punctuation

The program remembers the keys you pressed, not the letters, and asks Windows what the same key types in the other layout: Shift+2 types @ in the English layout and " in the Russian one.

Sound

A double click means the word was replaced, a single click means there was nothing to replace, and a dull thud means the program deliberately refused. To turn the sound off, clear the “Sound feedback” box.

Settings

Settings, section by section

Six sections: “General”, “Hotkey”, “Layouts”, “Exclusions”, “Diagnostics” and “State”. A few settings exist only in the settings file.

Exclusions

In “Settings…” → “Exclusions”, click “Pick a program window” and switch to the program within 5 seconds, or type the process name, such as game.exe, and click “Add”. Then click “OK”. In an excluded program, nothing you type is remembered, and the hotkey goes to the program itself.

The settings file

%APPDATA%\Lang_Switcher\config.toml. Some things can only be changed there: how many seconds it takes for a word to be forgotten, the replacement method and the clipboard pauses — and the feed, until its switch appears in the “From the author” window.

The “From the author” window

Open it from the tray menu: “About” → “From the author…”. It has “Support the author” and “Open the channel”, the feed status, “Recent letters” and “Write to the author…”.

Where it works

Console, PowerShell, Windows Terminal

In Windows Terminal and the classic console, the word you just typed gets fixed, but selected text doesn’t: the only way to read a selection is to press Ctrl+C, and in a console that stops the running command.

Browsers, Word and Telegram

In ordinary windows, the program selects the word you typed and types the replacement over it in one go, so autocomplete can’t swallow any letters. The clipboard isn’t touched.

Does it work in programs run as administrator?

Yes. The program is installed in C:\Program Files, and the installer creates its own certificate on your computer, for code signing only: it signs the program with it and destroys the key right away, and uninstalling the program removes the certificate too. That’s why Windows lets it work in windows of programs run as administrator. It can’t catch keystrokes on the UAC prompt, the Ctrl+Alt+Del screen or the sign-in screen: Windows doesn’t allow that.

Keyboard not responding

Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F12: Lang Switcher removes its keyboard hook and exits. This combination is checked before anything else, and it can’t be set as the hotkey.