How To Change Macbook Language
Giorgiana Sulyma
I bought a used MacBook Pro 13" (early 2015). It is a french MacBook, meaning it has a French keyboard. However, I fully formatted it through a USB key with El Capitan pre-loaded, and chose English as my language throughout the setup. However, for some reason, some elements remain in French. For example, recovery mode is still in French by default. Also, oddly enough, the names of the tags in Finder are also in French, even though the whole computer and keyboard are set up in English.
I just got an MBP from China and the first thing I did was change the language via System Preferences but ran into the same problems you did. My approach is slightly different and I'm trying to fix each Chinese issue I find, for example, like you my tag colours are in Chinese instead of English.
If you use iCloud Drive, sign out of iCloud in its preference pane, then sign back in and see whether there's any change. No data will be removed from the servers. That said, you should always have a current archiveof the data.
Even after resetting the NVRAM and running the sudo languagesetup command, it still asks me to choose the language every time I enter recovery mode. Nonetheless, that is way better than French being the default, so thank you for that!
Never used it or turned it on. But just to make sure, I turned it on and then off right away and selected to "Delete from this Mac" but the tags weren't affected. Even tried deleting the plist again and still nothing. Thanks!
I need to say that a backup, and a new install in complete English would do the Job. You would migrate certain data over(not recover the Mac install - recover the full install, and this error would show up).
Wrong language at times on my MacBook Pro:Thank you very much for the thorough explanation. I'm sure it would work, but it's certainly not worth the trouble for getting rid of what is after all a rather minor irritation (I do speak Italian)."
Thank you for giving this some thought. I'm hesitant to add any mention at all of Italian - can you explain why you think that would be useful? In any case, I'll certainly send along a screen shot next time it happens.
Because what you are describing simply shouldn't happen. I switch from English to French every so often for testing and that works perfectly. Obviously a system only in English should work only in English.
So, it seems like the only explanation is that your originally Italian-only system did not completely switch to an English-only system. Why that is, I don't know. But if you change the language settings again, by adding Italian as a lower priority, it might fix it. You might need to switch priorities from English to Italian and back again. Make sure to restart the system each time.
Modern versions of macOS don't handle language switches as well as they did years ago. Switching a language only switches apps after they restart. There are so many system processes that are always running that it is better to restart to get everything reset. And yet, you can have multiple users, each with completely separate languages. Go figure.
And one more thing. Double-check your language settings in System Preferences. There is a new tab in Catalina that allows you to override the language of individual apps. Make sure there aren't any apps listed in there.
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I am seeing particular issue with macBook where keyboard language gets changes very frequently. Issue is - i do know the workaround but its happening quite frequently . we can fix this issue by pressing control+command+command and then press shift multiple times. after automatically changing keyboard language , it show below words .....
Is there any permanent fix for this issue ? as it is quite annoying to fix this every minute. I also observed sometimes this issue occurs when i use bluetooth mouse(logitech) as well. Is there any way to get rid of this language change issue unless i change language explicitly from system preferences ?
You could try and check the preferred languages setting. Maybe you have a wrong speech selected as an alternative language and somehow it jumps back to that. Perhaps it somehow affects the keyboard setting although it shouldn't.
Here you should check wether there is a second language or something is weird. If nothing works I'd recommend checking if the Mouse is causing this glitch on other machines as well and if it doesn't - consider reinstalling MacOS (?)
Im looking for a way to quickly change the language of VoiceOver using a macBook Pro (Sierra version 10.12.6). By "quickly" I mean something like an rotor option as it is available in iOS or a keyboard shortcut that would not require me to change settings in the VoiceOver program every time I encounter a different web page. My native language is German, and Im currently studying in English at a Finnish university so language changes are part of my everyday life.
Any help is very appreciated!
Cheers,
rodja
Hi Rodja
This is Soren from Denmark writing. I often change my voiceover language setting and I do this by using the shortcut VO + Command + Shift and the arrow keys. This is the shortcut to the voiceover rotor and you can change speed, language, tonality and much more.
Regards Soren
Changing the language on your Mac isn't difficult, but there are a number of things you need to think about. These are the language in which menus and dialogs are displayed, the languages used by applications you run, the keyboard's language when you press keys, and the characters shown on the keycaps. To completely change the language on your Mac, you may need to change all of those things. Follow the steps above to do that; you will easily switch back and forth between languages.
i installed midnight commander by means of brew (brew install mc). But couldn't understand why it's in french. i've tried to reinstall it but it's turned out to be the same thing. Now i'm wondering how could i change the language to EN. Seems like there are no evident way to accomplish through GUI.
I'm having issues switching language input when writing text using Affinity Publisher. The standard keyboard shortcut for mac (Cmd+Space) doesn't do anything and instead plays a little error sound. When I'm not inside a text field, however, the shortcut works fine. So every time I want to switch input I have to exit the text box, press the shortcut, and then click back in again. I'm working on a project where I have to switch inputs very often, and this has become quite annoying. Other mac shortcuts (such as "Show Desktop" or "Quick Note") work fine, even when writing text.
Cmd+Space is the shortcut for Spotlight search on macOS, at least in English, and works fine in Affinity for me, and Cmd+Space is not a standard shortcut in Publisher. Perhaps you've assigned Cmd+Space to something? You can find out by opening Preferences > Shortcuts and typing Cmd+Space into any blank shortcut field. If it shows a yield sign mouse over that to find out what it's assigned to and then you can find and delete that one. Also delete the newly-assigned shortcut before you close this window.
I recommend also checking System Settings (formerly Preferences) > Keyboard to see what's assigned to the globe key. I assign mine to nothing because I frequently hit that key by accident but you can assign it to change the input source (keyboard).
Cmd+space is the standard shortcut for changing language input if you have several input languages (It automatically removes the Spotlight shortcut). I've tried changing the shortcut to F1 which worked fine in all other programs except when writing text in AP. I also tried to change the shortcuts so that Cmd+space opens Spotlight and it worked everywhere, even when writing text in AP. My laptop is 8+ years old so I don't have a globe key, only a "fn" key.
To me it seems that the problem is not the shortcut, but that AP for some reason blocks the possibility to change input when in a text box. It's really frustrating since I'm writing a language textbook and need to switch constantly.
Language is a Text Style attribute. If you are just wanting to change for spelling or language specific font ligatures you would need to set up a Character Style for each "different" language. For example if the bulk of the document has English Text with some Spanish and Italian then all the Text Styles (Paragraphs) would be set to English and then you would have a set of Character Styles for Spanish and Italian where the only change is the Language.
The languages are Swedish and Russian, so I'm working with two completely different alphabets. Mixing them in the same paragraph works just fine and I can apply the same text style to the different languages and get an identical effect. The only thing that doesn't work is the keyboard shortcut.
I am just guessing here. The Swedish and or Russian keyboard layout(s) may have different keyboard shortcuts or be remapping the shortcuts. In other words you are getting things jumbled up while in Affinity Applications and using a "Swedish" or "Russian" keyboard.
Cmd+Space Are you using Catalina or an older keyboard before the addition of the Globe key? Apple changed this shortcut in Big Sur. Cmd+Space is always Spotlight search now. The instructions for changing input language with the keyboard are now: