(208) Microsoft Intune - Setting 'Grave accent' to switch Language Input

Been working with a greenfield customer who I have been helping over the last few months, and of late they wanted to implement 'Grave Accent' with 'Thai Kedmanee'.

Keyboard: "Thai Kedmanee"

Advanced Key Setting:

- To turn off Caps Lock: "Press the CAPS LOCK key"

- Hot keys for input languages: Action: "Between input languages", Key sequence: "Grave Accent"

As the current build deploys en-US as the default language for their user driven and self-deployment builds which is covered in my blog here to use a win32 app.

The only way to get this working is to deploy as a 'PowerShell' script with the following:

As the default language is en-US, we are not going to mess up the win32 app as that works fine. As we want to add in "Thai Kedmanee" which is th-TH, we will need add it to the script to install that language pack.

In the script, it does show - this will still honor the required settings

        Set-Culture -CultureInfo en-US
        Set-WinSystemLocale -SystemLocale en-US
        Set-WinHomeLocation -GeoId 227 #Thailand
        Set-WinUILanguageOverride -Language en-US

We will use HKCU to deploy and enable these settings from 3. to 5. where 6.

# 1. Error Handling & Execution Context
$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"

# Function to check for Admin rights (needed for Language Installation)
function Test-IsAdmin {
    $currentPrincipal = New-Object Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal([Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent())
    return $currentPrincipal.IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole]::Administrator)
}

# 2. System-Level Settings (Must be Admin)
if (Test-IsAdmin) {
    try {
        # Check if language is already installed to avoid unnecessary overhead
        if (!(Get-InstalledLanguage | Where-Object { $_.LanguageId -eq "th-TH" })) {
            Install-Language th-TH -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
        }

        Set-Culture -CultureInfo en-US
        Set-WinSystemLocale -SystemLocale en-US
        Set-WinHomeLocation -GeoId 227 
        Set-WinUILanguageOverride -Language en-US
    } catch {
        Write-Warning "System-level settings failed: $_"
    }
}

# 3. User-Level Configuration
# Logic: We use -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue for registry creation to prevent "already exists" stops
try {
    # Ensure Registry paths exist
    $Paths = @(
        "HKCU:\Keyboard Layout",
        "HKCU:\Keyboard Layout\Toggle",
        "HKCU:\Control Panel\Input Method\Hot Keys\00000070"
    )
    foreach ($Path in $Paths) {
        if (!(Test-Path $Path)) {
            New-Item -Path $Path -Force | Out-Null
        }
    }

    # Define and Apply Language List
    $LanguageList = New-WinUserLanguageList -Language "en-US"
    $LanguageList.Add("th-TH")
    Set-WinUserLanguageList -LanguageList $LanguageList -Force -Confirm:$false

    # 4. Input Switching Hotkey (Grave Accent / Tilde)
    $HotkeyPath = "HKCU:\Control Panel\Input Method\Hot Keys\00000070"
    $TogglePath = "HKCU:\Keyboard Layout\Toggle"

    # Use 'Set-ItemProperty' carefully. Force ensures overwrite.
    Set-ItemProperty -Path $HotkeyPath -Name 'Key Modifiers' -Value ([byte[]](0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00)) -Type Binary -Force
    Set-ItemProperty -Path $HotkeyPath -Name 'Virtual Key' -Value ([byte[]](0xc0,0x00,0x00,0x00)) -Type Binary -Force
    
    Set-ItemProperty -Path $TogglePath -Name 'Language Hotkey' -Value '4' -Type String -Force
    Set-ItemProperty -Path $TogglePath -Name 'Layout Hotkey' -Value '4' -Type String -Force
    Set-ItemProperty -Path $TogglePath -Name "Hotkey" -Value "3" -Type String -Force

    # 5. Caps Lock Behavior
    Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Keyboard Layout" -Name "Attributes" -Value 0 -Type DWord -Force

} catch {
    Write-Warning "User-level settings failed: $_"
}

# 6. Final Sync
if (Test-IsAdmin) {
    try {
        # Note: This may fail if no user session is active or in certain OOBE states
        Copy-UserInternationalSettingsToSystem -WelcomeScreen $True -NewUser $True -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    } catch {
        Write-Host "Copy-UserInternationalSettings skipped or failed."
    }
}

Run this script using the logged on credentials = No

Enforce script signature check = No

Run script in 64 bit PowerShell Host = Yes

Once the device has received the script, it will deploy and set this.