Mac has wrong keyboard layout

Question

I have a Mac mini with Snow Leopard installed. It have a blue tooth keyboard. This keyboard is a Swiss-German keyboard with all the necessary special characters on it. I have two problems with this keyboard:

1. No matter what I do, it always acts as an US keyboard. The layout is wrong, X and Y are swapped and a lot of other characters are wrong placed. If I show the keyboard layout, it has an US in the title bar.
2. If I try to configure the key board I click on "Configure blue tooth keyboard" in the keyboard configuration. The Mac never finds the keyboard although I can use it (with the wrong layout)

Any ideas?

Solution

Going on what Daniel Beck said in the comments, in System Preferences (language and text -> input sources) you tell OS X what your keyboard layout is (what keys yield what characters).

For example, I have mine set to french in this screenshot, and when I type, instead of "qwerty" it's "azerty." I think this is what you're looking for.

Comments

[HikeMike]

Have you tried selecting the correct layout in Language & Text » Input Sources in System Preferences, then selecting it in the Input menu (the one showing the flag)?

[HikeMike]

At least provide some additional value in the answer ;)

[user3333603]

Ah, I thought the picture was value enough.

[BetaRide]

There's an important note to this: As you can see from superuser.com/questions/338632/… you have to set the keyboard layout for the login screen in a second step.

[user3333603]

@BetaRide That's only for the login screen - maybe not everyone wants to login with a german keyboard. But you're right, that's another thing to change if needed.

[Noah]

To change the login language, you have to re-run the setup assistant. To do so, log in as an admin user and run (from the terminal): sudo rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone; sudo "/System/Library/CoreServices/Setup Assistant.app/Contents/MacOS/Setup Assistant"