Physical keyboard layout menu not showing when keyboard connected to iPhone / iPad (iOS 13/14)

Question

I am trying to use my Bluetooth keyboard (Mx Keys) with iPhone and iPad.

I can pair them successfully, but they behave as if they were in a different keyboard layout than I expect (I use Polish Programmer, but on iOS it sets to some other).

You can supposedly change that using the physical keyboard menu in Settings > General > Keyboards in iOS, but all I see there is the function key bindings and no option to change the actual keyboard layout.

I also tried to enable/disable various software keyboards with different languages and change iPhone language and locales, but it does not seem to affect the hardware keyboard layout.

Adding English as second language in iOS did make the menu with layouts appear, but setting Polish layout still does not give me polish diacritics.

Please help?

Answer 1

With the keyboard connected, go to Settings → General → Keyboard → Hardware Keyboard. Then tap over at the right edge and you will get a list of layouts to select. Do not select "Automatic", but the one you want to use. I think you should be able to choose among at least "Polish, Polish Pro, and ABC Extended".

If a layout you want to use is not on the list, there is no way to fix that, as Apple has not yet provided a means to add custom hardware layouts in iOS. But you can ask them of course, via their feedback.

If you do not see the Hardware Keyboard setting when the keyboard is connected, then there is some kind of compatibility problem. I have not heard of this happening with other Bluetooth keyboards up to now.