Documentation · Hotkey and layouts

Lang Switcher hotkey: no Pause/Break key on your laptop?

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.

No Pause/Break key on your laptop?

Lots of laptops don’t have a pause break key at all, and on others it’s hidden under Fn. Whether your keyboard calls it the pause key or the break key, it’s the same key, and for Lang Switcher it’s just the default. You have three options:

Press it with Fn. If Pause is a secondary function of another key, Fn plus that key works as Pause, and you don’t need to change anything.
Set another key or a combination, such as F12, CapsLock or Ctrl+F12.
Use a double Shift: two short presses of Shift in a row.

How to change it

Click the tray icon with either mouse button and choose “Settings…”.
In the “Hotkey” section, click “Set”. The field now says “A key or a combination…”, and the button turns into “Cancel”.
Press a key or a combination, or press Shift twice in a row. To cancel, press Esc or click anywhere else.
Click “OK”.

The settings window: the “Hotkey” section is on the left, second from the top.

What you can set

A single key, such as F12 or CapsLock.
A combination: a key with any mix of Ctrl, Alt and Shift, such as Ctrl+F12 or Alt+Shift+K. Only the exact combination counts. With Ctrl+F12 set, a plain F12 and Ctrl+Shift+F12 still go to your programs, as if Lang Switcher weren’t there.
A double Shift: two short presses in a row. The field shows “Shift, Shift”.

The “Hotkey” section before, during and after you set a key. Under the field, the program tells you what you’ve got.

Double Shift

Two short taps of Shift convert the word, and two more bring it back. Each tap must last no longer than 0.4 s, and the second one must start within 0.4 s of the start of the first. Typing a capital letter, pressing Alt+Shift or holding Shift while you click doesn’t count as a tap.

Other programs see the taps too. If a program has its own command for a double Shift (Search Everywhere in JetBrains IDEs, for example), that command runs as well. Windows treats five presses of Shift in a row as its own shortcut and offers to turn on Sticky Keys. While a double Shift is your hotkey, Lang Switcher turns that shortcut off until it exits, and nothing is written to your Windows settings.

What you can’t set

If you press one of these, the program refuses and says why, right under the field:

a key that types a character, on its own, with Shift or with Ctrl+Alt;
Ctrl or Alt on its own;
any combination with Win;
the arrow keys, Home, End, Delete and keys like them;
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F12, which is the emergency exit.

Windows’ own language shortcut

The shortcut Windows uses to switch the input language (Alt+Shift, Win+Space) is a Windows setting. Lang Switcher doesn’t change it, and you can keep using it: switching the layout that way doesn’t erase the word you’re typing.

In the settings file

The [hotkey] section of %APPDATA%\Lang_Switcher\config.toml:

[hotkey]
key       = "F12"
modifiers = ["Ctrl"]
trigger   = "press"

modifiers takes "Ctrl", "Alt" and "Shift"; [] means the key on its own. trigger is press (a single press) or double_tap (two taps, only with key = "Shift").

A double Shift in the file is key = "Shift", modifiers = [], trigger = "double_tap". If the file has any other modifier ("Win" included), a trigger other than those two, or double_tap with another key, the hotkey falls back to Pause. Edit the file while the program isn’t running.