How to Remove a Keyboard Layout on Mac (and Why ABC Won't Delete)

Extra keyboard layouts pile up quietly. You tried a phonetic variant once, added a language for a trip, or macOS slipped in "ABC" on its own - and now every press of Ctrl+Space cycles through layouts you never use. The more layouts in the list, the more often you land on the wrong one.

The good news: removing a layout takes about four clicks. The annoying news: sometimes the minus button is greyed out, and one layout - usually ABC - refuses to leave. Both cases below.

The normal way

1. Open System Settings → Keyboard.
2. In the Text Input section, next to "Input Sources", click Edit….
3. Select the layout you don't need in the left-hand list.
4. Click the minus (−) button, then Done.

That's it. The layout disappears from the input menu and from the switching rotation immediately - no restart needed.

If you use the shortcut rotation ("select next input source"), it's worth doing this for everything you don't type in. Two languages should mean exactly two entries in the list - each extra one is another stop between you and the layout you actually wanted.

When the minus button is greyed out

macOS won't let you remove the last remaining input source - there always has to be at least one. So if the minus is inactive, you're most likely trying to delete the only layout left, or the only one for that script.

The fix is order of operations: first add the layout you want to keep (the plus button in the same window), make sure it works, and only then remove the old one.

The stubborn ABC layout

The classic case: you type in your own languages, but an "ABC" or "U.S." layout sits in the list and the minus button does nothing. This usually happens for one of two reasons.

Reason 1: a CJK input source needs it. Chinese, Japanese and Korean input methods use a Latin layout internally, so macOS keeps ABC around as long as one of them is installed. If you don't actually use that input method, remove it first - ABC becomes deletable right after.

Reason 2: it's stuck. Sometimes ABC hangs around with no visible reason - a leftover from migration or an old bug. Two things to try, in order:

1. Add any other Latin layout (say, "British"), quit System Settings, reopen it, remove ABC, then remove the layout you just added. Shuffling the list like this often unsticks it.
2. If that fails - the blunt instrument. Quit System Settings and delete the input-source preferences file:

defaults delete com.apple.HIToolbox

Then log out and back in. macOS rebuilds the list with the default layout for your system language, and you add back the ones you want. Your layouts' settings reset, but nothing else is affected.

Removing a layout doesn't delete your text settings

A few things people worry about, needlessly:

• Text you've typed stays as it is - a layout is just a key map, not a dictionary.
• Autocorrect and text replacements live separately (System Settings → Keyboard → Text Replacements) and survive any layout changes.
• If you remove a layout and later add it back, it behaves exactly as before.

So there's no reason to keep a layout "just in case". Adding one back takes about a minute.

While you're in that window

Two neighbouring settings cause most of the everyday layout pain:

• "Automatically switch to a document's input source" - per-app layout memory. If your Mac seems to change language on its own, this checkbox is the usual suspect.
• "Show input menu in menu bar" - keep it on, so you can always see which layout is active before you type.

Trimming the list helps you land on the right layout more often - but it doesn't catch the times you start typing before looking. For that half of the problem there's our app Boomkey: when a word comes out in the wrong layout, one keystroke converts it in place, in any app. Native menu bar app, everything runs locally, one-time purchase with a 7-day trial.

But start with the list. Two layouts, a visible indicator, no per-app memory - and the keyboard gets noticeably more predictable.