How to show current keyboard layout on mate-panel as country flag?

I'm using Ubuntu MATE 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS.

I want to change current keyboard layout indication from text (for example ru, en) to the corresponding country flags.

How can I do this?

Solution 1:

On Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS and newer you need to send one command:

gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-keyboard-xkb.indicator show-flags true

it will change MATE Panel appearance from

to

On Ubuntu 16.04 LTS having MATE 1.12 this method does not work out-the-box (it is bug 1783543), but we have two options here:

• download flags manually and place them in home folder:

    mkdir -p ~/.icons/flags
    cd ~/.icons/flags/
    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/linuxmint/flags/master/usr/share/iso-flag-png/{ru,us}.png
  

  then toggle layout indicator state:

    gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-keyboard-xkb.indicator show-flags false
    gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-keyboard-xkb.indicator show-flags true
  

  and we will get flags in place. Note: I used ru and us, you can pick others from LinuxMint GitHub repository.

• use newer MATE 1.16 from official xenial-mate PPA:

    sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-mate-dev/xenial-mate
    sudo apt update
    sudo apt full-upgrade
  

  then enable flags

    gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-keyboard-xkb.indicator show-flags true
  

  and we can get flags in place after reboot and login.

On Ubuntu 14.04 LTS we need to download flags manually (as in 16.04 LTS):

mkdir -p ~/.icons/flags
cd ~/.icons/flags/
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/linuxmint/flags/master/usr/share/iso-flag-png/{ru,us}.png

then toggle layout indicator state:

gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-keyboard-xkb.indicator show-flags false
gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-keyboard-xkb.indicator show-flags true

and we will get flags in place.