Non-US keyboard layouts: LUKS, SDDM and Hyprland

If you type on AZERTY, QWERTZ, a Nordic layout or anything else that is not US QWERTY, Omarchy 4.0.x will surprise you at least once. Checked against v4.0.4.

Where the layout actually comes from

There are three separate places, and only one of them is set for you reliably.

1. The console and the LUKS unlock prompt read KEYMAP in /etc/vconsole.conf. These are console keymap names such as fr, be-latin1 or no-latin1. Omarchy’s /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.d/omarchy_hooks.conf keeps the keymap and consolefont hooks and adds FILES+=(/etc/vconsole.conf) so Plymouth applies the layout at the prompt, unless your layout is non-Latin.
2. The Hyprland session reads XKBLAYOUT and XKBVARIANT from the same file. The packaged /usr/share/omarchy/default/hypr/input.lua does local kb_layout = vconsole.XKBLAYOUT or "us". No XKBLAYOUT means US, no matter what KEYMAP says.
3. The SDDM greeter reads neither. Its compositor config, /usr/share/sddm/hyprland.lua, sets only misc and animations. With no input block, Hyprland uses its own default, which is US. Four separate reports say the same thing: #6880, #9421, #10269 and #10454, all still open as of 2026-09-16.

Before you install, pick a safe passphrase

The dangerous moment is full-disk encryption on a fresh install. In #8196 an AZERTY user picked French in the installer, used digits in the password, and found the LUKS prompt rejecting it on every boot. On AZERTY the digits are the shifted top row, so a passphrase enrolled with the layout applied is untypeable when the prompt falls back to US. Reinstalling was the only way out.

Until that is fixed, pick a disk passphrase from keys that sit in the same place on your layout and on US. In practice that means lowercase letters only. Leave out a, q, z, w and m on AZERTY, y and z on QWERTZ, and skip digits and punctuation entirely. Change it to something stronger after first boot, once you have confirmed the prompt uses your layout.

The fix

Run these after your first boot. Replace fr with your layout and pc105 with your model.

1. See what you have now.

cat /etc/vconsole.conf
localectl status
hyprctl getoption input:kb_layout

2. Set both the console keymap and the XKB layout.

sudo localectl set-keymap fr
sudo localectl set-x11-keymap fr pc105
grep -E 'KEYMAP|XKB' /etc/vconsole.conf

If that grep shows no XKBLAYOUT, add it yourself. This is the missing piece on the fresh 4.0.0 install in #7049, and on machines upgraded from 3.x, reported in #6878.

printf 'XKBLAYOUT=fr\n' | sudo tee -a /etc/vconsole.conf

3. Rebuild the initramfs and the UKI so the LUKS prompt picks up the keymap.

sudo limine-mkinitcpio

4. Fix the session if it is still US after a logout. Open ~/.config/hypr/input.lua, or reach it from the Omarchy menu with Super + Space under Setup then Input, and add:

hl.config({
  input = {
    kb_layout = "fr",
    kb_variant = "",
  },
})

5. Fix the SDDM greeter. Do not edit /usr/share/sddm/hyprland.lua, because it belongs to the omarchy-settings package and the next omarchy update that ships that package will put the stock file back. Put your own copy under /etc and point SDDM at it.

sudo mkdir -p /etc/sddm
sudo tee /etc/sddm/greeter-hyprland.lua >/dev/null <<'EOF'
hl.config({
  input = {
    kb_layout = "fr",
    kb_variant = "",
    kb_model = "pc105",
  },
  misc = {
    disable_hyprland_logo = true,
    disable_splash_rendering = true,
    force_default_wallpaper = 0,
  },
  animations = { enabled = false },
})
EOF
sudo tee /etc/sddm.conf.d/20-keyboard.conf >/dev/null <<'EOF'
[Wayland]
CompositorCommand=start-hyprland -- --config /etc/sddm/greeter-hyprland.lua
EOF

SDDM merges everything in sddm.conf.d in filename order, so 20-keyboard.conf wins over the shipped 10-wayland.conf. Neither new file is owned by a package, so a package update has no reason to touch them.

Verify it worked

grep -E 'KEYMAP|XKB' /etc/vconsole.conf
hyprctl getoption input:kb_layout
hyprctl devices | grep -i 'active keymap'

hyprctl getoption should report your layout, not us. For the greeter, log out rather than reboot: with encryption enabled, autologin skips the greeter at boot, so a reboot proves nothing. Type a layout-sensitive character in the password field and check it appears correctly. For the LUKS prompt, reboot and type one character of your passphrase that moves between layouts before you finish entering it.

The top bar carries a keyboard layout widget, but it stays hidden while only one layout is configured, so do not treat its absence as a failure.

Why it happens

On the fresh 4.0.0 install in #7049, the installer recorded the choice as a console keymap only: vconsole.conf had KEYMAP=no-latin1 and nothing else, so the packaged input.lua fell through to its "us" default even though the console was correct. A later report in the same thread, on 4.0.2, did get XKBLAYOUT=ch written, and the 4.0.4 first boot provisioner’s own comments say systemd-firstboot --keymap is expected to set both values. So whether you are missing XKBLAYOUT depends on which release installed your machine, which is why step 2 has you check rather than assume.

Upgrades from 3.x fail differently. On 3.8.4 the layout lived in ~/.config/hypr/input.conf as kb_layout = fr. Quattro moved Hyprland config to Lua, installs a stock input.lua, and does not copy the old value across. If vconsole.conf has only KEYMAP, the session silently becomes US. That is #6878.

The greeter is a third code path. It runs its own Hyprland instance through CompositorCommand in /etc/sddm.conf.d/10-wayland.conf, and the config that instance loads never reads /etc/vconsole.conf.

If the LUKS prompt already rejects your passphrase

You are not necessarily locked out. The enrolled bytes are whatever the installer produced with your layout applied, so a live environment with the same layout loaded can usually still open the volume.

1. Boot the Omarchy ISO from omarchy.org and check it against the verification steps.
2. In the live shell, load your layout and try the volume. Use lsblk to find the partition.

loadkeys fr
sudo cryptsetup open /dev/nvme0n1p2 test

3. If it opens, the passphrase is fine and only the boot prompt’s keymap was wrong. Mount your root subvolume, arch-chroot in, make sure /etc/vconsole.conf has the right KEYMAP, and run limine-mkinitcpio before rebooting.
4. If it does not open, try again with loadkeys us, then with the characters you believe you typed rather than the ones you intended. Once it opens, change the passphrase with cryptsetup luksChangeKey to something layout-stable.

Rolling back to an earlier boot entry is another route if a rebuild broke a prompt that used to work. See rollback with Snapper and Limine.

If that did not work

Check whether your layout is non-Latin. Omarchy treats af am ara bd bg by et ge gr il in iq ir kg kh kz la lk mk mm mn mv np rs ru sy th tj ua as a special case: vconsole.conf is deliberately kept out of the initramfs so a Latin passphrase stays typeable, after #6229 locked a Hebrew user out of their own machine. The session also gets us prepended to kb_layout, with grp:alts_toggle so Left Alt plus Right Alt switches. A US LUKS prompt on those layouts is intended behaviour, not a bug to fix.

If the session ignores input.lua, check that you are editing ~/.config/hypr/input.lua and not the old input.conf, which Quattro no longer reads. See the Hyprland conf to Lua migration for what moved where.

If Hyprland reports the right layout but the on-screen keyboard or fcitx5 still types US, look at ~/.config/fcitx5/profile. Both reports in #7049 found it pinned to keyboard-us regardless of the installer choice. Stop fcitx5 before editing it, because it rewrites the file on exit.

If the greeter is still US, confirm the drop-in is being read, and check that nothing else in /etc/sddm.conf.d sets CompositorCommand later in sort order. SDDM does not filter that directory by extension, so an old file you renamed to .bak or .disabled is still loaded.

What to watch for on newer versions

The seven open issues behind this page were all still open on 2026-09-16, and neither the 4.0.3 nor the 4.0.4 release notes mention keyboard layout. The packaged default/sddm/hyprland.lua in the 4.0.4 snapshot still has no input block, and the quattro-dev development branch did not have one either at the time of checking. When a fix does land, the shipped greeter config will start reading /etc/vconsole.conf, at which point your /etc/sddm.conf.d/20-keyboard.conf drop-in becomes redundant but harmless. Remove it then so you are not pinning an old copy of the greeter config.

Related

• Day one checklist
• Keyboard layouts and locale
• Upgrading 3.x to 4 Quattro
• Official manual: Keyboard, Mouse, Trackpad