setxkbmap - set the keyboard using the X Keyboard Extension
setxkbmap [ args ] [ layout [ variant
  [ option ... ] ] ]
The setxkbmap command maps the keyboard to use the layout determined by
  the options specified on the command line.
An XKB keymap is constructed from a number of components which are
    compiled only as needed. The source for all of the components can be found
    in /usr/X11R7/lib/X11/xkb.
  - -compat name
- Specifies the name of the compatibility map component used to construct a
      keyboard layout.
- -config file
- Specifies the name of an XKB configuration file which describes the
      keyboard to be used.
- -device device
- Specifies the numeric device id of the input device to be updated with the
      new keyboard layout. If not specified, the core keyboard device of the X
      server is updated.
- -display display
- Specifies the display to be updated with the new keyboard layout.
- -geometry name
- Specifies the name of the geometry component used to construct a keyboard
      layout.
- -help
- Prints a message describing the valid input to setxkbmap.
- -I directory
- Adds a directory to the list of directories to be used to search for
      specified layout or rules files.
- -keycodes name
- Specifies the name of the keycodes component used to construct a keyboard
      layout.
- -keymap name
- Specifies the name of the keymap description used to construct a keyboard
      layout.
- -layout name
- Specifies the name of the layout used to determine the components which
      make up the keyboard description. The -layout option may only be
      used once. Multiple layouts can be specified as a comma-separated
    list.
- -model name
- Specifies the name of the keyboard model used to determine the components
      which make up the keyboard description. Only one model may be specified on
      the command line.
- -option name
- Specifies the name of an option to determine the components which make up
      the keyboard description; multiple options may be specified, one per
      -option flag. Note that setxkbmap adds options specified in
      the command line to the options that were set before (as saved in root
      window properties). If you want to replace all previously specified
      options, use the -option flag with an empty argument first.
- -print
- With this option setxkbmap just prints component names in a format
      acceptable by xkbcomp (an XKB keymap compiler) and exits. The
      option can be used for tests instead of a verbose option and in cases when
      one needs to run both the setxkbmap and the xkbcomp in chain
      (see below).
- -query
- With this option setxkbmap just prints the current rules, model,
      layout, variant, and options, then exits.
- -rules file
- Specifies the name of the rules file used to resolve the requested layout
      and model to a set of component names.
- -symbols name
- Specifies the name of the symbols component used to construct a keyboard
      layout.
- -synch
- Force synchronization for X requests.
- -types name
- Specifies the name of the types component used to construct a keyboard
      layout.
- -variant name
- Specifies which variant of the keyboard layout should be used to determine
      the components which make up the keyboard description. The -variant
      option may only be used once. Multiple variants can be specified as a
      comma-separated list and will be matched with the layouts specified with
      -layout.
- -verbose|-v [level]
- Specifies level of verbosity in output messages. Valid levels range from 0
      (least verbose) to 10 (most verbose). The default verbosity level is 5. If
      no level is specified, each -v or -verbose flag raises the
      level by 1.
- -version
- Prints the program's version number.
If you have an Xserver and a client shell running on different computers and
  some XKB configuration files on those machines are different, you can get
  problems specifying a keyboard map by model, layout, and options names. This
  is because setxkbmap converts its arguments to names of XKB
  configuration files according to files that are on the client-side computer,
  then sends these file names to the server where xkbcomp has to compose
  a complete keyboard map using files which the server has. Thus if the sets of
  files differ in some way, the names that setxkbmap generates can be
  unacceptable on the server side. You can solve this problem by running the
  xkbcomp on the client side too. With the -print option
  setxkbmap just prints the file names in an appropriate format to its
  stdout and this output can be piped directly to the xkbcomp input. For
  example, the commandsetxkbmap us -print | xkbcomp - $DISPLAY
makes both steps run on the same (client) machine and loads a
    keyboard map into the server.
Xwayland is an X server that uses a Wayland Compositor as backend. Xwayland acts
  as translation layer between the X protocol and the Wayland protocol but does
  not manage the keymaps - these are handled by the Wayland Compositor.
Changing the keymap with setxkbmap is not supported by
    Xwayland. In most instances, using setxkbmap on Xwayland is
    indicative of a bug in a shell script and setxkbmap will print a
    warning. Use the Wayland Compositor's native XKB configuration methods
    instead.
xkbcomp(1), xkeyboard-config(7)