Langwitch

Langwitch is a small system utility that lets you easily switch the input language of your keyboard.

The application runs on the menubar, and when you click on its icon, you will see a small window pop up which includes all the input languages that you have configured on your Mac. Simply clicking one of those languages will make the switch for you. This beats having to go to the system preferences every time you want to switch the language, and it saves you a lot of time if you do this a lot. Another interesting and time-saving feature is hotkey support. In the Preferences window, you can click next to each language to assign it a hotkey, which, when pressed will make the switch for you, regardless of what application is active. From this window, you can also set the application to show the current language that is active on the menubar, instead of the application icon.

I can't stress enough how important this application can be for users like me who often write in two languages. The default English keyboard is great, but for accents and other characters, it is often best to switch to another keyboard, and Langwitch saves a lot of time. It is also free, which makes it even better.

The only thing that I wish this app could do is activate new languages without having to open the language preferences.