Installed but not activated keyboards

[Liv]

Hello,

I’m kinda new to this, but I got a question

I have certain Keyboards installed (can be seen in Organizer), but I’m only able to activate (use as input source) some of them. I tried anything I could think of from restarting, to simplifying the modifiers, to taking out certain symbols, but I truly do not know what is the problem. 

I added screenshots of anything I could think of.

Best Wishes and thanks in advance, 

Liv

PS: The only other thing might be the dead keys, but I got no clue what to do with that. 

I have noticed that the installed ones don’t have modified with option

I have tried through Library/ Keyboard Layouts and it doesn’t help (but that might be me) 

[John Brownie]

I don’t see any screenshots. The usual problem is that there is something funny in the file that makes the keyboard layout compiler fail somehow. One way to work around this is to go to Preferences and turn on the preference “XML has code points”. Save and reinstall the keyboard layout, and it may well work. If not, post the keyboard layout here, and I can take a look.

John

[Liv]

I tried to change the preference, but it didn’t work. I added the keyboard as a file. 

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[Liv]

Hey, thanks for the help. I figured out what was wrong

[Gé van Gasteren]

On Sunday, 16 November 2025 at 22:53:42 UTC+1 Liv wrote:

Hey, thanks for the help. I figured out what was wrong

Congratulations! 

Can you let us in on the secret?

That way, this thread might be useful for future users. 

I was just experimenting and found the same behavior: 

The layout opens nicely in Ukelele and can be installed with the Organiser, but it doesn’t show up when trying to activate it in the System Preferences panel.

The same thing when put into a bundle and assigned language "German". 

So now I’m really curious what’s going on there…

[Liv]

Hey, I would love to be helpful, but I don’t entirely know. I just started a new layout and tried until it failed. It’s one of the signs under options, but I don’t know why

All of these work, so it must be multiple, but I have no clue why. 

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[Gé van Gasteren]

OK, let’s see.

1. Do you start your keyboard layouts on the basis of your active layout, e.g. German?

You can do that with the command File > New From Current Input Source

Or do you start from scratch with the command File > New Keyboard Layout… ? 

E.g. by adjusting the appearing dialog as shown here:

2. The picture you show is of the version that you could activate, I guess :-)

I copy it here for easier comparison: 

And here’s the earlier version, which you couldn’t activate (screenshot from within Ukelele):

The differences are: all the keys on the top row and the 3d row (that’s the row to the right of the Caps Lock key).

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[Liv]

Ok,

 so the first I started, with a given Input, form german, 

the one that works I started from scratch, 

but I checked and it also works if you take put the characters (and dead keys) from the one that didn't work. 

I don't know what exactly made the difference. 

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[Gé van Gasteren]

On Sun, Nov 16, 2025 at 11:55 PM Liv <liv6...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ok,

 so the first I started, with a given Input, form german, 

the one that works I started from scratch, 

but I checked and it also works if you take put the characters (and dead keys) from the one that didn't work. 

I don't know what exactly made the difference. 

Thanks, those are important details.

I think I’ll leave it at that :-)

[John Brownie]

I had a look at the keyboard that was sent to the group. It has an action element that refers to a non-existent state. I am not sure how that got there! But using the menu command to remove unused actions should make it work.

John

[Gé van Gasteren]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2025 at 8:24 AM 'John Brownie' via Ukelele Users <ukelel...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I had a look at the keyboard that was sent to the group. It has an action element that refers to a non-existent state. I am not sure how that got there! But using the menu command to remove unused actions should make it work.

I thought that maybe Liv deleted one of the dead-key states in the problematic keyboard layout – is that a possible route to that situation, where an action element refers to a non-existent state? 

However, the default German keyboard coming with macOS (Tahoe) has the same number of dead-key states as the problem keyboard, so that doesn’t seem likely.

Or is that a completely different story? I don’t really know what action elements are or the states they refer to.