LayoutLight is a small macOS menu-bar utility that makes the active keyboard layout visible without interrupting typing.
It can show the current layout near the text caret, around the focused window, along a screen edge, and as a compact flag overlay when the input source changes.
This is a personal macOS project. Source code is here; signed and notarized DMGs are published on the Releases page when available.
- Status bar flag — the current input source is shown in the menu bar.
- Caret indicator — a colored line, square, dot, or underline follows the text caret in supported applications.
- Window / edge indicator — highlight the focused window with a frame, or show a single edge line similar to ShowyEdge.
- Language-aware colors — use separate colors for English and Russian indicators.
- Hotkeys:
⌃ ⌥ ⇧ ⌘ 1switches to Russian.⌃ ⌥ ⇧ ⌘ 2switches to English.⌃ ⇧ Lshows the current language overlay.
- Auto overlay on switch — briefly shows the current language when the system input source changes.
- Launch at login — optional startup through macOS Service Management.
- Localized settings — English and Russian UI.
- Download
LayoutLight-x.y.dmgfrom the latest release. - Open the DMG and drag
LayoutLight.appto Applications. - On first launch, grant Accessibility access: System Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Accessibility -> enable LayoutLight.
- Optional: enable Launch at Login in LayoutLight settings.
Open LayoutLight.xcodeproj in Xcode 16+ and build the LayoutLight scheme.
LayoutLight currently requires macOS 15.5 or later.
Command-line debug build:
xcodebuild -project LayoutLight.xcodeproj -scheme LayoutLight -configuration Debug build
Command-line release build:
xcodebuild -project LayoutLight.xcodeproj -scheme LayoutLight -configuration Release build
Tested on Apple Silicon.
Because the project is intended to be built locally, macOS may ask for Accessibility permission for your locally signed copy of the app.
- Caret and window indicators require Accessibility access because macOS exposes caret and focused-window geometry through Accessibility APIs.
- Hotkeys and input-source observation use public macOS APIs and do not require extra permissions.
- LayoutLight does not use networking, analytics, or remote update code.
LayoutLight uses two Accessibility paths to find the caret position:
- Native Cocoa text fields —
AXSelectedTextRange+AXBoundsForRange. - WebKit / Chromium content —
AXSelectedTextMarkerRange+AXBoundsForTextMarkerRange.
The indicator is event-driven: a per-app AXObserver fires on focus and selection changes, with a low-rate fallback poll for apps that do not emit all notifications.
| Application | Status | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| TextEdit, Notes, Mail, Pages, Xcode | Works | Native Accessibility text geometry |
| Safari URL bar and web inputs | Works | Native + text-marker geometry |
| Chrome, Edge, Arc | Works | Text-marker geometry |
| VS Code, Cursor | Requires editor.accessibilitySupport: "on" |
Accessibility is disabled by default unless a screen reader is detected |
| Slack, Discord | Usually works | Modern Electron text-marker geometry |
| Microsoft Word | Partial | Office Accessibility support is incomplete |
| Sublime Text | Does not work | Custom rendering, no text bounds |
| Terminal.app, iTerm2, Warp | Does not work | Terminals do not expose text-range bounds |
| Figma, some JetBrains IDEs | Does not work | Custom rendering, no text bounds |
This is a macOS API limitation: there is no public API to globally recolor the native caret in every application.
See SECURITY.md.
MIT License. See LICENSE.