Switching layout while certain keys are pressed

[AndrewKun]

Hi,

I'm a Colemak user, and as with most Dvorak/Colemak users, I have issues with keyboard shortcuts. I heard MacOS have a built-in feature that, whenever any of the following keys are pressed, the layout is switched to QWERTY: Ctrl/Cmd, Alt, Shift, Meta/Win

Then, as soon as all of those keys are releasd, the layout is back to Dvorak/Colemak.

Can something like this be implemented in AHK on Windows? Any help is appreciated.

[mshafer1]

actually, Win10 has this builtin as well: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-change-your-keyboard-layout-windows-10
Win + Space

but also looks like https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18519 has a library where you can call SetDefaultKeyboard, for example: https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=19534

[AndrewKun]

actually, Win10 has this builtin as well: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-change-your-keyboard-layout-windows-10
Win + Space

Thank you, unfortunately it's not what I need, as this shortcut scrolls between the available layouts. What I need, on the other hand, is that layout is only switched from default to another while any of the specified keys are pressed, and switched back while the key is released. What complicates that matter, is that shortcuts typically consists of multiple keys, e.g. Alt+Shift+R, or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S e.t.c. So, I imagine the logic will be:

while (any of [ctrl, alt, win] key is pressed down) {
switch layout to specific one, and ignore the rest of the keys from [ctrl, alt, win] range.
}

So then when the first key is released (up), switch layout back to default one.

but also looks like https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18519 has a library where you can call SetDefaultKeyboard, for example: https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=19534

Yes, this looks like the function I want, thank you. Now I need to figure out how to implement that. I'll try to do it myself, but any hints are appreciated.

[mshafer1]

Another option is to manually code the whole thing - https://autohotkey.com/board/topic/7462-qwerty-remapped-as-dvorak/

Maybe make keyboard shortcuts to start and stop that script?? (You could use Hotkey, but that would be a lot of hotkeys to turn on and off - so at minimum I would suggest code-gen'ing that)