Many users mistakenly change the Windows display language or region format instead of the keyboard layout. Changing your region to the UK will show dates as DD/MM/YYYY and currency as £, but it will not change your keyboard. You must explicitly add the "United Kingdom" keyboard under the keyboards section, as shown in Method 2.
| Key Combination | US Output | UK Output |
|----------------|-----------|-----------|
| Shift + 2 | @ | " |
| Shift + 3 | # | £ |
| Shift + ' (apostrophe) | " | @ |
| Shift + \ (backslash) | | | # (on some layouts) |
| Key to left of 1 | | ¬ | | Grave/tilde key location | Top-left | Next toZ` (on ISO keyboards) | how to change keyboard from us to uk windows 11
If you want the UK keyboard to be the default every time you log in, even before opening any app: Many users mistakenly change the Windows display language
Under the "Welcome screen and new user accounts" section, click "Copy settings…". This is useful if you want the UK layout to apply to the login screen and all new users. | Key Combination | US Output | UK
If you are connected to a remote PC, that remote computer uses its own keyboard settings. When using Remote Desktop, the host machine's layout overrides your local settings. You need to change the keyboard layout inside the remote session, not on your local Windows 11 machine.