Default input profiles (input locales) in Windows

Input profiles (or input locales) describe the language of the input entered, and the keyboard on which it is being entered. When the first user logs into Windows and identifies their region, Windows sets the input profiles.

Input profiles

The input profiles are made up of a language identifier and a keyboard identifier. For example, the Arabic (Algeria) input profile is 1401:00020401, where 1401 is the hexadecimal identifier of the language Arabic (Algeria) (language tag ar-DZ) and 00020401 is the hexadecimal identifier of the Arabic (102) AZERTY keyboard.

When the user first identifies the time and date format (User Locale) as Algeria, Windows sets up both the primary input profile, and a secondary input profile: French (France) with French keyboard. The secondary input profile can help the user by providing a keyboard with a Latin character set for tasks that require it, such as filling out email addresses. Some input methods (like Microsoft IME) have a Latin character set built in.

Windows uses the language component of the input profile for tasks like spelling, hyphenation, and text prediction of the intended key press when using the touch-screen keyboard.

When setting up new devices for your users, you can use the DISM commands: /Set-InputLocale or /Set-AllIntl to identify a default input profile. You can either select the input profile by its language and keyboard pair (1401:00020401) or you can use a language/region tag to receive the default settings for that language/region.

Examples:

Dism /Image:"C:\mount\windows" /Set-InputLocale:042d:0000040a
Dism /Image:"C:\mount\windows" /Set-InputLocale:0411:{03B5835F-F03C-411B-9CE2-AA23E1171E36}{A76C93D9-5523-4E90-AAFA-4DB112F9AC76}
Dism /Image:"C:\mount\windows" /Set-InputLocale:id-ID
Dism /Image:"C:\mount\windows" /Set-AllIntl:fr-FR

Input locales

For a list of language/region names, see Available Language Packs for Windows.

Related topics

• Default Time Zones
• Add Language Packs to Windows
• Available Language Packs for Windows
• Keyboard identifiers for Windows
• DISM Languages and International Servicing Command-Line Options