Technical Enhancement

When you're learning Indonesian, you will use both English and Bahasa Indonesia. The wrong way to handle that is to install two separate keyboards. The right way is to turn on multilingual typing, where one keyboard understands both languages at the same time, and autocorrect, prediction, and spell-check adapt automatically to whichever language you're typing.

I set this up on my own Android phone with Gboard. Here's how to do the same on every platform.

Android (Gboard)

Gboard officially supports multilingual typing in up to three languages at once, but using more than two can lower accuracy.

1. Open Settings, then System, then Languages & input, then On-screen keyboard, then Gboard.
2. Tap Languages, then Add keyboard, search for Indonesian, pick a layout, and tap Done.
3. Make sure your existing English layout is also in the list.
4. Go back to Languages under settings for GBoard, click on English and then you will see Multilingual typing with the checkbox as well for Indonesia
5. Open any app and start typing. Gboard predicts and autocorrects in both languages without you doing anything.

If predictions still feel one-sided, long-press the spacebar in Gboard, tap the language picker, and confirm both languages are active.

iOS (Apple Keyboard)

Since iOS 13, Apple's built-in keyboard has supported bilingual prediction once a second language is added.

1. Open Settings, then General, then Keyboard, then Keyboards.
2. Tap Add New Keyboard... and choose Indonesian.
3. Keep your existing English keyboard in the list above it.
4. Start typing. The QuickType bar pulls suggestions from both languages, and autocorrect uses the dictionary that matches the word you're writing.

If you want the same multilingual experience as Android, install Gboard from the App Store, enable it under Keyboards, and follow the Android steps. Gboard on iOS supports the same multi-language typing as on Android.

Windows 11 (SwiftKey)

The touch keyboard on Windows 11 is Microsoft SwiftKey, which has multilingual text suggestions built in.

1. Open Settings, then Time & Language, then Language & Region.
2. Click Add a language, search for Indonesian, and install it. You don't need to set it as your display language.
3. Go back to Settings, then Time & Language, then Typing, and turn Multilingual text suggestions on.
4. SwiftKey now offers suggestions from both languages while you type, and the system spell-checker underlines errors using whichever dictionary matches.

macOS

macOS doesn't have one-keyboard predictive multilingual typing the way Gboard does, but it does have automatic per-language spell-checking, which is the closest equivalent. Also, macOS has no predictive text engine on the Mac side at all in the Gboard sense, unlike iOS.

1. Open System Settings, then Keyboard.
2. Scroll down to the Text Input section.
3. Click the Edit button (it's next to Input Sources).
4. In the panel that opens, find the Spelling dropdown.
5. Open that dropdown, at the very bottom you'll see Set Up, Click it.
6. Check the languages you want included (English and Indonesian), drag them into your preferred priority order, then click Done.
7. Back on the Spelling dropdown, choose Automatic by Language at the top.
8. macOS will now detect the language of each word as you type and apply the correct spell-check dictionary, so Indonesian words stop getting flagged or autocorrected to English.

If you do a lot of multilingual writing on your Mac, third-party tools like Grammarly or LanguageTool also support per-document language detection.

Linux

If you use Linux, you already know what to do.

Help us keep this correct

If you notice these instructions are outdated or incorrect let us know in the comments and we will be happy to help troubleshoot and keep this accurate. Selamat menulis!