Preventing Windows 11 from Automatically Adding Default Keyboard Layouts
If you’ve customized your keyboard layout in Windows 11 and find that the operating system keeps re-adding its default UK layout—despite your efforts to remove it—you’re not alone. Many users experience issues where Windows 11 automatically restores system default input options, interfering with personalized configurations. This guide provides an overview of the problem and practical solutions to maintain your preferred keyboard settings.
Understanding the Issue
In your setup, both your display language and input language are set to “English (United Kingdom).” You have made a custom keyboard layout using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator 1.4, assigning it to the same language. Up until recently, this configuration functioned smoothly. However, an unexpected change occurred: Windows 11 began to automatically add the built-in UK keyboard layout to your language preferences, despite your manual removal.
This problem often arises from Windows’ default behavior of managing language and keyboard input methods, especially when multiple language packs or keyboard layouts are configured or when system updates modify input preferences.
Why Does Windows 11 Re-Add Default Keyboard Layouts?
Windows 11 aims to ensure system stability and language consistency, so it might:
- Restore default layouts after updates or restarts.
- Re-add layouts if they are considered essential for some functions.
- Override custom settings if the system detects discrepancies or conflicts.
While this behavior can be frustrating, there are several strategies to prevent Windows from automatically re-adding unwanted keyboard layouts.
Practical Solutions to Stop Automatic Addition of Keyboard Layouts
1. Use Windows Settings to Remove Unwanted Layouts
- Navigate to Settings > Time & Language > Language & Region.
- Select your language (e.g., English (United Kingdom)) and click on Options.
- Under Keyboards, remove the undesired layouts, including the in-built UK layout.
- Restart your system and verify if the layout persists.
Note: Sometimes, Windows will revert to default layouts upon restart if the language configuration is set to automatically add layouts.
2. Disable Keyboard Layouts via Registry Editor
For more persistent control, editing the Windows Registry can prevent default layouts from reappearing:
- Press Win + R, type regedit, and press Enter.
- Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\KbdLayerDescriptor\Layout\ - Look for entries corresponding to layouts and remove entries
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