How to change system language, keyboard and region settings

Display language, keyboard layout and region format are three separate settings, and changing one rarely changes the others. Knowing which control does what saves a lot of hunting through menus.

Three settings that are easy to confuse

The display language decides what the interface text says. The keyboard or input method decides which characters you can type. The region decides how dates, times, currency, units and number separators are formatted.

Set the language to French and your menus turn French, but a device still set to the United States region will keep showing 12-hour times and dollar symbols. Set the region to France and the dates flip to day-first even if every menu stays in English. Most complaints about a device "not changing language properly" come down to editing only one of the three.

Changing the display language

On iPhone and iPad, the controls live together under General, in the Language and Region pane. On Android the equivalent group sits under System, in Languages and input; Android treats the list as an ordered preference, so dragging a language to the top makes it the primary one and apps fall back down the list when they lack a translation.

On Windows 11 the pane is Time and language, then Language and region. A new display language downloads a language pack first, and the change only completes after you sign out and back in. macOS keeps Language and Region in the General group, and Ubuntu and ChromeOS both use a Region and Language style page that also asks you to sign out to apply. The language guide lists the current wording per version.

Keyboards are added, not switched

Adding a language does not always add its keyboard. On iOS you add layouts under General, in the Keyboards list, then switch with the globe key. Android installs input methods per keyboard app, so a Gboard user adds languages inside Gboard rather than in system settings alone.

Windows attaches keyboard layouts to each installed language and exposes them in the taskbar language switcher, which is why a UK layout can appear on a US install and swap the quote and at symbols. Ubuntu and ChromeOS both list input sources separately from display language for the same reason. If you write in two scripts daily, add both layouts once and leave them installed.

Region controls dates, currency and units

Region format is a formatting engine, not a translation. It drives the first day of the week, 12 or 24-hour clock, temperature units, paper size, decimal separator and the currency symbol that apps inherit by default.

Because it is inherited, a spreadsheet opened on a machine with a comma decimal separator can misread numbers exported from a machine using a full stop. Setting region explicitly on both, rather than relying on the language default, prevents that. Windows also separates the regional format from the display language, so you can run an English interface with German formatting. Comparing how the two families organise this is one of the clearer differences in the iOS versus Android comparison.

Per-app language and right-to-left layouts

You no longer have to change the whole system for one app. iOS 13 and later expose a Language entry inside each app's own settings page, and Android 13 added App languages under the system Languages screen. macOS offers the same per-app override in its Language and Region pane.

Switching to Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi or Urdu also mirrors the interface: navigation bars, back arrows and list alignment flip to right-to-left, and some apps need a restart to redraw correctly. Assistants are separate again, with Siri and Google Assistant keeping their own language setting. Use the settings finder when a menu has moved, browse the Ubuntu hub for the desktop layout, and try the changes first in the settings simulator so you can always find your way back.