For many of you this shortcut will not be new, but I didn’t know him for a long time and many friends who have been using Windows for decades haven’t knew him until recently. I also found him by chance.

The shortcut

The shortcut is at least available in Windows XP and later. Whether it existed also in earlier versions I cannot say at present, because I do not have Windows running in a previous version in a VM or a computer anymore. But now let’s introduce the shortcut and what he is good for:

ALT + SHIFT

With this shortcut you can change the input language in Windows. Those of you, using the “Input Language bar” should see a change in the input language by using the key combination.

But why this shortcut is so important? In a German Windows version mostly German and English are set as input languages and German is set as the default. Many German users accidentally pressed that key combination, without knowing it. Then only in the program you used the combination, the input language switched to English. Since Windows can adjust the input language for each program, the confusion is complete when you switch to another program and the input language is German again.

Conclusion and tip

With this shortcut you can change the language at any time immediately, if you accidentally changed it. As many of you rarely or never use the English keyboard layout (since all the letters can be typed with the German keyboard layout), I’d give you the following advice: The best thing to do is removing the English input language via the control panel. That will protect you from accidentally switching the input language.