Wayfire kbdd plugin: per-window keyboard layout for Wayfire

The wayfire-kbdd-plugin can be used to automatically change the keyboard layout on a per-window basis.

Usage

For automatic start enable the plugin in Wayfire Config Manager or add the word kbdd to the core.plugins list.

The information about current keyboard layout can be exported to a file for use by external layout indicator.

Build and install

meson build
ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install

This will install to /usr/local/. To install in /usr you can use the option: meson build --prefix=/usr.

Layout indicator in Waybar

The plugin exposes /tmp/layout.json file, with content like

{"id": 0, "name": "Polish", "code": "pl"}

You can use this data and implement own keyboar layout indicator.

Here is an example for Waybar.

You need to create a helper script ~/bin/kbd-layout.sh that waits for updates in that file

#!/usr/bin/env sh

FILE="/tmp/layout.json"
DEFAULT_LAYOUT="pl"

function get_code() {
    CODE=$(test -f "${FILE}" \
               && grep -oP '"code":\s*"\K[^"]+' "${FILE}" \
                   || echo "${DEFAULT_LAYOUT}")

    case "${CODE}" in
        us) echo "🇺🇸" ;;
        de) echo "🇩🇪" ;;
        ro) echo "🇷🇴" ;;
        fr) echo "🇫🇷" ;;
        it) echo "🇮🇹" ;;
        gb|uk|en) echo "🇬🇧" ;;
        ua) echo "🇺🇦" ;;
        pl) echo "🇵🇱" ;;
        *)  echo "${CODE}" ;;
    esac
}

get_code

inotifywait -q -m -e close_write "$(dirname "${FILE}")" |
    while read path action file
    do
        if [ "${file}" = "$(basename "${FILE}")" ]
        then
            get_code
        fi
    done

This script just waits for updates, and wakes up for a short moment of time only when layout is changed.

Then, in ~/.config/waybar/config we can configure a custom module, that waits for updates from upe script and shows what that script returned – flags:

    "custom/kbdlayout": {
        "exec": "~/bin/kbd-layout.sh",
        "exec-on-event": false,
        "interval": 0,
        "return-type": "text"
    }