I’m using Windows 8 for my regular daily work. I’m also using English as the display language and most time I type English for almost everything. However, I’m a Chinese and from time to time I need to type Chinese, for example, in the IM message window to chat with my friends. So that, of course I have Chinese language and its IMEs installed.

Not like in the previous versions of Windows, Windows 8 now uses Win+space hotkey to switch between the IMEs. The beloved years of Ctrl+space experience disappears, suddenly. And, another damn thing I really hate is, once I switch the IME, all running applications now are with that IME, meaning that I have to switch again and again between English input and Chinese input, once after I chat with a friend when I have to type Chinese.

So today I’m enough with these switches and spent some little time on the language configurations of Windows 8 and it turns out I can get the comfortable experience back.

Just go to the Change your language preferences window, open the Advanced settings option, and turn on the Let me set a different input method for each app window option. Then log off and re-login, and voilà, all the familiar behaviors are back!

Hope this helps,

-Jack