im-control

中文版

Yet another im-select implementation for Windows.

Advantages over im-select:

• Works for nearly all kinds of windows, including console window and UWP windows.
• Allows for switching IM by TIP's GUID, while im-select only switches languages.
• Allows for setting compartments, including:
  • keyboard on/off state (e.g. Chinese/English mode for Chinese IMEs or Kana/English mode for Japanese IMEs).
  • conversion mode (e.g. alphanumeric/native mode).
• Console window won't flash when running from GUI.
• Other features, including conditional switching, etc.

How It Works

im-select uses ActivateKeyboardLayout to switch keyboard layouts (languages), which not work for some kinds of windows, e.g. console windows and UWP windows.

On modern Windows, input methods are managed by the Text Services Framework (TSF). Each input method is represented by a Text Input Processor (TIP), which is identified by a globally unique identifier (GUID). The active TIP can be changed using the ITfInputProcessorProfileMgr::ActivateProfile method, which works for nearly all kinds of windows.

However, TSF requires the caller to be in the same thread as the foreground window. In order to effectively call TSF APIs, im-control injects a window procedure foreground window using SetWindowsHookEx, and then sends a custom window message to the injected window to execute TSF APIs. Other parameters are passed through shared memory to the target window.

Using this approach, im-control can call all TSF APIs on the target window, e.g., ITfCompartment::SetValue, is used to set compartments.

Build and Install

Make sure you have CMake and Visual Studio installed.

cmake -S . -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022"
cmake --build build --config RelWithDebInfo

# place the output binaries in `bin` directory
cmake --install build --prefix bin --config RelWithDebInfo

Usage

im-control [LANGID-{GUID}] [-k|--keyboard <open|close>] [-c|--conversion-mode <alphamumeric|native[,...]>] [--if <LANGID-{GUID}>] [--else <LANGID-{GUID}>] [-o FILE]
im-control -l|--list
im-control -v|--version

Before running, please make sure the following files are in the same directory:

• im-control.exe
• im-control-injector-32.dll
• im-control-injector-64.dll
• im-control-hook-32.dll
• im-control-hook-64.dll

Switch Input Method by LANGID-{GUID}

# English (United States)
im-control 0409-{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}

# Chinese (Simplified, China) - Microsoft Pinyin
im-control 0804-{81D4E9C9-1D3B-41BC-9E6C-4B40BF79E35E}

# Weasel (RIME)
im-control 0804-{A3F4CDED-B1E9-41EE-9CA6-7B4D0DE6CB0A}

The output is the previous IM's LANGID-{GUID}.

Set Keyboard On/Off State (For Chinese input methods, this sets Chinese/English mode.)

im-control -k open
im-control -k close

Or Combine the Above

# Switch to Weasel and turn on Chinese input mode
im-control 0804-{A3F4CDED-B1E9-41EE-9CA6-7B4D0DE6CB0A} -k open

Conditional Switching

# If current input method is en-US keyboard, switch to Chinese Pinyin, else switch to Weasel
im-control 0804-{81D4E9C9-1D3B-41BC-9E6C-4B40BF79E35E} --if 0409-{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} --else 0804-{A3F4CDED-B1E9-41EE-9CA6-7B4D0DE6CB0A}

List All Input Methods

im-control -l

Get Current Input Method

im-control

History

v0.5.0 (2025/10/24)

• Implement -l|--list option.

v0.4.0 (2025/10/18)

• Compile as Windows GUI application to avoid console window flash, but still supports to attach to console when run from console.
• Use Event instead of waiting for process exit to reduce wait time.
• Add -o|--output FILE option to write output to file.
• Add --if and --else options for conditional switching.
• Unify GUID format to upper case letters.
• Refactor and improve injector code.
• Improve logging.
• Other bug fixes.

v0.3.0 (2025/10/14)

• Change command line syntax to be more compatible with existing tools.

v0.2.0 (2025/10/14)

• Add implementation for getting current IM.
• Add -version --version to show version information.

v0.1.0 (2025/10/14)

Initial release.