How to return the flags to the Mac's keyboard menu

For a long time, Apple relied on a region flag as the primary indicator of which keyboard format you’d chosen in macOS for languages affiliated with a one nation. In the previous numerous versions of macOS, you pick keyboards in Procedure Tastes > Keyboards > Enter Sources by clicking the + (as well as) sign and searching or seeking for the structure you want.

The flags aided some of us figure out and verify the format we wanted when several alternatives for a language were being available, this sort of as a French format utilized in France versus a French layout used in Canada. Many entries utilized letters or logograms as their image, this kind of as Arabic, when no one place affiliation produced feeling.

In macOS 12.4 Monterey, Apple took down the flags and put up the more boring—but most likely far more neutral and readable—two-letter global place codes in areas where by it formerly utilized flags. Now all entries in Enter Resources have letters, in some cases with an elaboration (these types of as VI earlier mentioned TX to indicate Vietnamese in Telex input structure), as an alternative of a combine.

(A helpful idea: If you look at “Show Enter menu in menu bar” to show keyboard alternatives in the Keyboard choice pane’s Input Resources view, you can then select Present Enter Source Identify from the Enter menu to show facts past the nation code or abbreviation, like “GB British” for the United kingdom English keyboard.)

Though Apple didn’t disclose its motivations, it may well be because of to the significantly fraught character of displaying flags in a environment with several lively territorial disputes, border wars, and separatist movements, some of which occur with competing flags, new flags, or flags that can provoke violence by their use.

Get the United Kingdom, which is much more thoroughly “the United Kingdom of Fantastic Britain and Northern Ireland,” a one nation of four sections: England, Northern Eire, Scotland, and Wales. The U.K. has a single flag for the country employed internationally, but there are historic and modern flags for England, Scotland, and Wales included in Unicode and utilised in day to day life—yet Northern Ireland has none for intensely political reasons. You can see the problem.

Additional pragmatically, the group that offers unified character-representation benchmarks for scripts (the letters that make up languages), symbols, Emoji, and much more, the Unicode Consortium, has determined to stop approving new flag emoji. That usually means any upcoming flag would have to be independently drawn and supported by Apple and not immediately interchangeable with other platforms. (Windows, in reality, has under no circumstances bundled drawings of flags in its Emoji sets at all.) It also allows the consortium tip-toe out of political discussions, leaving all those to other worldwide bodies.

Nevertheless, if you want flags more than letter codes, you can restore them with economical utilities released by developers:

• Keyboard Switcheroo: For $1.99, this application makes a new input-variety menu that works by using place flags, color-coded two-letter place codes, or an impression you choose.
• Colourful Enter Menu Flags: This competing $.99 app focuses on flags and lets you choose amid variants for a language.

Inquire Mac 911

We have compiled a record of the issues we get requested most regularly, alongside with solutions and hyperlinks to columns: read our tremendous FAQ to see if your concern is lined. If not, we’re always looking for new challenges to address! Email yours to mac911@macworld.com, including display screen captures as correct and no matter if you want your entire name employed. Not just about every question will be answered we do not reply to electronic mail and are not able to present immediate troubleshooting guidance.