Is there a way to switch between installed windows keyboard layouts in c#?

Question

I have two text-boxes, one for English and one for Russian. For ease of use purposes, I'd like to know if there's something available in c# that tells my system to switch to one of the installed keyboard layouts.

I would then plan to set a method that does this as soon as one of the text-boxes get focused.

So when the Russian box is focused, the windows Russian keyboard layout is used and vice versa.

I was searching online for a bit but I didn't find any of the sort. Since I wanted it finished early I did a workaround and just simulated the key-presses necessary to switch keyboard layouts on windows using Input-simulator. Now I am looking for a better solution.

Public Form1()
{
   // I use the method when either of the text-boxes are used.
   // When I find a better solution, there will obviously be two separate methods
   txtRussian.GotFocus += SwitchKeyboard;
   txtEnglish.GotFocus += SwitchKeyboard;
}
private void SwitchKeyboard(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   // shift alt for keyboard layout switch
   sim.Keyboard.ModifiedKeyStroke(VirtualKeyCode.SHIFT,VirtualKeyCode.LMENU);
   // LMENU (Left Alt) tends to still be pressed after you he finished the modified keystroke.
   // So that makes any first key the user presses be the "LAlt + {a key}" instead of just a key.
   // By normally simulating its press again the issue is gone
   sim.Keyboard.KeyPress(VirtualKeyCode.LMENU);

}

Of course, this isn't what I'd truly want, cause whenever you alt tab in and out and refocus on a text-box, it'll just switch to the next keyboard layout installed instead of a specified keyboard layout for which the text-box is meant.

So yeah, is there a way to switch to a specified windows keyboard layout with c#?

Answer 1

There is the "InputLanguage" class in the System.Windows.Forms namespace. You could use the "InputLanguage.CurrentInputLanguage" property to change the currently used keyboard layout.

There is already another post on stackoverflow about that: C# - Automatically switch between two different IME in the same keyboard layout

However, you can only change the input language with that, but not the layout inside the language. But I think changing the input language is what you need. If you also need to change the input layout of the language you could do so with setting the .ImeMode property of the TextBox.