Change keyboard layout to DVORAK from command line on Mac

Question

How can I change the keyboard layout to Dvorak on a mac, using the terminal? What is the defaults write setting for the keyboard layout?

See Mac OS X: how do I change to Qwerty / Dvorak with a terminal command?, Switch TO specific input source and How to I use Apple Script to change the keyboard layout on Snow Leopard?. — Lri, Jun 24 '11 at 03:35
An answer in the third question suggests something like plist=$(find ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox.*); defaults write ${plist%.*} AppleCurrentKeyboardLayoutInputSourceID -string com.apple.keylayout.US; killall SystemUIServer. I couldn't get that to work myself though. — Lri, Jun 24 '11 at 03:36

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 27 '11 at 06:01

This snippet did the trick for me. Note that I use Quicksilver to launch apps, so I remapped the keyboard shortcut for "switch input menu" from Cmd+Space to Option+Cmd+S.

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events"' \
          -e 'keystroke "s" using {command down, option down}' \
          -e 'end tell'

Change keyboard layout to DVORAK from command line on Mac

1 Answers1

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