mjhjmtu

Maybe this is version dependent, but on my machine that uses setxkbmap 1.3.0 the following command works:

setxkbmap -query | grep layout

Note that depending on your need it may be useless to know only the layout : for instance the Dvorak variant of the US layout is quite different than the default QWERTY. The -query option of setxkbmap gives both the layout and the variant, as different fields :

$ setxkbmap -query
rules: evdev
model: default
layout: fr
variant: bepo
options: grp:alt_shift_toggle

There is xkb-switch which is described thus:

xkb-switch is a C++ program that
allows to query and change the XKB
layout state.

https://github.com/ierton/xkb-switch

Or, following nozimica's suggestion, you could use:

setxkbmap -print | awk -F"+" '/xkb_symbols/ print $2'

From this thread on the Arch Linux boards: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=539406

Yes THERE IS a command line tool that does what you want!
I just discovered it 10min ago :)

Look at here: https://github.com/nonpop/xkblayout-state

xkblayout-state print "%s"

does exactly what you want (it doesn't output an end of line, so add ; echo if you need).
run the tool without parameters for the help.

Use this to get the code for the current layout:

$(xset -q|grep LED| awk ' print $10 ')

This might needs to be converted to a form you want, like:

case "$(xset -q|grep LED| awk ' print $10 ')" in
 "00000002") KBD="English" ;;
 "00001002") KBD="Thai" ;;
 *) KBD="unknown" ;;
esac

Another simpler approach, because of fixed positions of the output of the xset -q command, is this:

xset -q | grep -A 0 'LED' | cut -c59-67

It prints 00000002 or 00001002 depending on your current keyboard layout.

On newer systems, you can use

localectl status

It will for instance show you the following:

System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 VC Keymap: us
 X11 Layout: us

From Goosfrabaa in the Arch Linux forums:

setxkbmap -v | awk -F "+" '/symbols/ print $2'

This works correctly here, and prints us(dvorak-intl) (displayed as "USA Dvorak international" in the GNOME keyboard selection menu).

The answers so far did not work for me. I use setkbmap with two layouts english and czech so any -print or -query will always return the two. Grepping the LED status for xset -q does not work either since that one shows the status of all keyboard leds.

The best so far was to quickly write this small utility:
https://gist.github.com/fikovnik/ef428e82a26774280c4fdf8f96ce8eeb

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

#include <X11/XKBlib.h>
#include <X11/extensions/XKBrules.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv) 
 Display *dpy = XOpenDisplay(NULL);

 if (dpy == NULL) 
 fprintf(stderr, "Cannot open displayn");
 exit(1);
 

 XkbStateRec state;
 XkbGetState(dpy, XkbUseCoreKbd, &state);

 XkbDescPtr desc = XkbGetKeyboard(dpy, XkbAllComponentsMask, XkbUseCoreKbd);
 char *group = XGetAtomName(dpy, desc->names->groups[state.group]);
 printf("Full name: %sn", group);

 XkbRF_VarDefsRec vd;
 XkbRF_GetNamesProp(dpy, NULL, &vd);

 char *tok = strtok(vd.layout, ",");

 for (int i = 0; i < state.group; i++) 
 tok = strtok(NULL, ",");
 if (tok == NULL) 
 return 1;
 
 

 printf("Layout name: %sn", tok);

 return 0;

and compile using


gcc -I/usr/include getxkblayout.c -lX11 -lxkbfile


Partial answer: On KDE, you can apparently get the current keyboard layout through the qdbus command:

$ qdbus org.kde.keyboard /Layouts getCurrentLayout
gb(intl)

I have several layouts configured, but it only shows the one that is currently in use.

Tested on Kubuntu 18.04 (qdbus version 4.8.7). There may be other d-bus based solutions for non-Qt environments, but I do not know about them.

#! /bin/bash
# (GPL3+) Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)


keyboardLayout () 
 layout=$(variableInFile "KEYMAP" "/etc/vconsole.conf")
 echo $layout



variableInFile () 
 variable=$1
 file=$2

 source $file
 eval value=$$variable
 echo $value



keyboardLayout

You can use:

setxkbmap -print | grep xkb_symbols