Removing Only the "ENG" Keyboard in Windows 11 While Keeping English as the Display Language

I use Windows 11 with the display language set to English, and I use Google Japanese Input for typing Japanese.

Windows 11 comes with an English input method, "ENG English (United States)" (the US keyboard). But since I have Google Japanese Input installed, I wanted to type English with its direct input mode as well, and switch between English and Japanese entirely inside Google Japanese Input. Its key bindings work better for me.

While ENG is still there, some apps switch to it on their own, which gets in the way. So I wanted to remove ENG, but it cannot be removed just by using Settings or Control Panel in the GUI. Here is how I removed it with PowerShell.

Environment

• Windows 11 Pro (build 26200)
• Japanese edition of Windows, with English (United States) added and the display language switched to English
• Google Japanese Input for Japanese

Checking the current state

First, look at the current language list in PowerShell.

Get-WinUserLanguageList | Format-List LanguageTag, Autonym, InputMethodTips

LanguageTag     : ja
Autonym         : 日本語
InputMethodTips : {0411:{D5A86FD5-5308-47EA-AD16-9C4EB160EC3C}{773EB24E-CA1D-4B1B-B420-FA985BB0B80D}}

LanguageTag     : en-US
Autonym         : English (United States)
InputMethodTips : {0409:00000409}

• ja has Google Japanese Input (0411:{D5A86FD5-...}{773EB24E-...})
• en-US has the US keyboard (0409:00000409). This is what shows up as "ENG"

InputMethodTips is the list of input methods (keyboards / IMEs) available for that language. Each entry is a string in the form LanguageID:KeyboardLayoutOrImeID.

Let's also check the display language settings.

[Globalization.CultureInfo]::InstalledUICulture.Name   # ja-JP
(Get-WinUILanguageOverride).Name                        # en-US

The base OS language is Japanese (ja-JP), and English is shown through the "UI Language Override". In other words, English is treated as a language pack added later.

Emptying the English keyboard list

In Settings, you cannot remove the US keyboard, because each language must have at least one keyboard. So I rewrote the language list directly from PowerShell.

At first I intended to "replace the en-US keyboard with Google Japanese Input", and ran this:

$tip = '0411:{D5A86FD5-5308-47EA-AD16-9C4EB160EC3C}{773EB24E-CA1D-4B1B-B420-FA985BB0B80D}'
$list = Get-WinUserLanguageList
$en = $list | Where-Object LanguageTag -eq 'en-US'
$en.InputMethodTips.Clear()
$en.InputMethodTips.Add($tip)
Set-WinUserLanguageList $list -Force

# Also make Google Japanese Input the default input method for new windows
Set-WinDefaultInputMethodOverride -InputTip $tip

After running it, the state looked like this:

LanguageTag     : ja
InputMethodTips : {0411:{D5A86FD5-5308-47EA-AD16-9C4EB160EC3C}{773EB24E-CA1D-4B1B-B420-FA985BB0B80D}}

LanguageTag     : en-US
InputMethodTips : {}

Google Japanese Input is an input method for Japanese (0411), so it seems it could not be attached to en-US and was dropped. As a result, en-US ended up with no keyboard at all.

Just to be sure, I checked the registry too.

Get-ItemProperty 'HKCU:\Keyboard Layout\Preload'

Only 1 = 00000411 remained, and the former 2 = 00000409 (US) was gone.

I expected Windows to add the US keyboard back to en-US automatically, but it did not. The goal was achieved:

• The only input method is Google Japanese Input, and ENG no longer appears
• English (United States) stays in the language list, and the display language is still English

How to revert

Just add the US keyboard back to en-US.

$list = Get-WinUserLanguageList
$en = $list | Where-Object LanguageTag -eq 'en-US'
$en.InputMethodTips.Clear()
$en.InputMethodTips.Add('0409:00000409')
Set-WinUserLanguageList $list -Force