How can I change the Keyboard Layout on login screen?

Question

I changed my Keyboard Layout from Swedish to English, but now my password doesn’t work and I can’t login. I need a way to change the keyboard layout at the login screen without having access to the keyboard or a way to enter the password using characters not available on the keyboard itself.

Solution

• Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to switch console mode. Type your username and press Enter and also now type your password.

• Next type sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration and hit Enter type your password again and follow screen instruction.

As usual, it will prompt you for the model of keyboard (what the keyboard is), and then for the keyboard layout (what the keys should do)

To apply new settings, restarting the keyboard-setup service with this

 sudo service keyboard-setup restart

Comments

[Anto]

Possible duplicate of How do I change the login manager's keyboard layout?

[Cedric Martens]

But how am I supposed to type sudo service keyboard-setup restart if I can't login because of the layout

[Colonel Panic]

Why switch to console mode? Can't I just open a terminal?

[Akif]

Ctrl + Alt + F3 for switching to console mode in Ubuntu 18.04 askubuntu.com/a/1053220/726213

[wgj]

This worked specifically when most x.org settings (setxkbmap and localectl ... would not persist after restarts with Kali. Thank you very much.

[medina]

I've ben looking for this solution for a long time. Really appreciate your answer. Many thanks!

[ElRudi]

I know this thread is old, but maybe the people are still around ;) Is there a way to add a second keyboard? This solution replaces the existing layout

[user149408]

To answer some questions from the comments: Depending on how/where OP set the layout, this change only affects the desktop session, but not the tty consoles (where the login screen gets its layout from depends on the flavor of Ubuntu). Hence we need Ctrl + Alt + F3 to switch to a tty console, which (hopefully) still has the Swedish layout so OP can enter their password. Of course one could run these commands from a terminal, but only after you manage to log into a desktop session.

[user149408]

Wouldn’t it be possible to run sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration in recovery mode and revert to a keyboard layout that has all the characters needed for recovery mode?

[Admin]

For me it was a french "afnor" and I switched to "azerty". It was a shot in the dark however, I wonder where one could find a list of all available variants

[Admin]

you can try localectl list-x11-keymap-layouts or localectl list-x11-keymap-variants

[Admin]

That's excatly what I meant ! Thanks !