[MC-308219] IME forcefully switches to US English and locks permanently on MacOS

On macOS, the game aggressively overrides the system's active IME and forces the keyboard layout to US English. This layout lock completely prevents switching to a non-English layout (e.g., Russian) while the game window is in focus.

Steps to Reproduce:

In macOS System Settings -> Keyboard -> Input Sources, add a non-English keyboard layout (e.g., Russian) and set it as the active layout.
Launch a pure Vanilla instance of Minecraft 26.1.2.
Observe that the macOS layout is immediately forced to US English while in the Main Menu.
Enter a singleplayer world.
Attempt to switch the layout back (Ctrl + Space). Observe that the layout immediately switching back to US.
Open the chat, switch the layout (which works while the GUI is open), type a message, press Enter.
Observe the system keyboard layout in the macOS menu bar instantly snapping back to US English the moment the chat GUI closes.

Expected Results:
The game should respect the active macOS system keyboard layout and allow the user to freely toggle between system input languages.

Also tested on Linux system and confirmed that the bug only macOS related.

Environment

macOS Tahoe 26.5, MacBook Pro, M4 Pro 2024, Java 25.0.1 (Microsoft build java-runtime-epsilon)

Linked issues

is duplicated by 1

MC-310637 Non-English input methods are automatically reset to English ones. Resolved

relates to 3

MC-306928 Switching to another window still forcibly sets the input method to English when no input field is focused Resolved

MC-308804 The input method does not switch to the corresponding CJK mode in the Create New World screen Resolved

MC-307017 Can't change language from English Resolved

Attachments

Comments 3

Automation for Jira 2026-05-17T15:21:35Z

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[Mojang] Triage Team 2026-05-22T07:05:12Z

Thank you for your report!
After consideration, the issue is being closed as Won't Fix.

Please note that this is not the same as Working as Intended, as this bug report correctly describes behavior in the game that might not be the intended or desirable behavior, but it will not be fixed right now. Sometimes, this is because the issue reported is minor and/or impossible to change without large architectural changes to the code base.

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boq 2026-05-25T06:48:28Z

Note: the limitation comes from library (GLFW) and/or OS. The only option that is available to us is on/off switch for IME, and we need to force it off when no text input is focused to allow normal game inputs to work. I’m not sure why it’s tangled with keyboard layout on macOS, as those are two distinct concepts.