What's this blue badge that keeps appearing in my text?

[David Sharp]

Sorry if the answer to this should be easily findable in the user manual—I simply have no idea how to look for it.

I've recently found a pesky little blue badge appearing in place of the insertion point when working on a text. Most of the time it contains a reference to whichever of my two languages I'm not working in (Fr or En); on other occasions an uppercase symbol.

I have absolutely no idea what it's supposed to do—clicking on it produces no obvious effect, and I find it distracting.

I date the appearance of this phenomenon to my recent move to Sonoma. I'm running NWP 3.4 on a MacBook Pro with an M2 chip.

I'd be most grateful if some kind soul could tell me what it means, and how I could make it go away.

[phspaelti]

It's the indicator that shows you which keyboard is currently active. Don't know if it can be turned off.
It doesn't "do" anything.

[David Sharp]

Problem solved—at least for me.

On further examination, I worked out that the blue badges were linked to the "Text Input" options, which are found in the "Keyboard" section of Sonoma's settings. (It was obvious that they weren't due to Nisus, as they also appeared when I opened Word).

I presume the settings in question may be of use to people who work in more than one language with different scripts and need to switch either between different physical keyboards, or different keyboard configurations, while working.

As I work in French and English, all my needs are met by my single French keyboard.

However I had at some point inadvertently authorised several different options within the "Text input" settings. Once I deactivated the redundant ones, leaving me with just the "French" setting, the annoying blue badges disappeared.

[xiamenese]

Apart from indicating that you've changed keyboards, it also, at least on Sonoma 14.5 on my M2Pro Mac Mini, indicates when Caps Lock is on. I use English and Chinese and due to certain motor problems, I am continually pressing the switch key and the Caps Lock keys by accident. So I personally find it very useful, thougfh I can imagine others find it unnecessary and irritating.

Mark

[jdevriendt]

Good morning,

Here I am, with Sequoia OS, to answer you. I use keyboards azerty France, ςερτυμ, йцукенгь, קשערטײַ, and sometimes qwerty Icelandic for extinct European languages. When I lock the capital letters (Cap lock), a keyboard identification sign, with its two initial letters appears where my cursor is.
As switching from a language to another in a single sentence, I find this system setting useful! Because yes, everything comes from the system in this case.

[David Sharp]

Merci beaucoup—many thanks.

As noted earlier, the reason I found the blue badges irritating was that I'd inadvertently authorised other keyboard combinations which I didn't in fact need for my two languages, English and French. Since I got rid of the unwanted options, I now only see a badge if I leave caps lock on.