OS X: Changing the language shown in menus and dialogs

Learn how to display menus and dialogs in different languages.

The Finder and applications included with Mac OS X v10.1 or later can display menus and dialog text in any of these languages:

  • English
  • Japanese
  • French
  • German
  • Spanish
  • Italian
  • Portuguese
  • Portuguese (Portugal) -- Mac OS X v10.5 or later only
  • Dutch
  • Swedish
  • Norwegian Bokmål
  • Danish
  • Finnish
  • Russian -- Mac OS X v10.5 or later only
  • Polish -- Mac OS X v10.5 or later only
  • Chinese (Simplified)
  • Chinese (Traditional)
  • Korean
  • Arabic -- OS X Lion v10.7 or later only
  • Czech -- OS X Lion v10.7 or later only
  • Hungarian -- OS X Lion v10.7 or later only
  • Turkish -- OS X Lion v10.7 or later only
  • Thai -- OS X Lion v10.7.3 or later only
  • Catalan -- OS X Lion v10.7.3 or later only
  • Croatian -- OS X Lion v10.7.3 or later only
  • Greek -- OS X Lion v10.7.3 or later only
  • Hebrew -- OS X Lion v10.7.3 or later only
  • Romanian -- OS X Lion v10.7.3 or later only
  • Slovak -- OS X Lion v10.7.3 or later only
  • Ukrainian -- OS X Lion v10.7.3 or later only

The order of languages used by an application is set in Language & Text preferences (or International preferences in Mac OS X v10.5.8 or earlier). If an application is not localized (translated) for the first language in the list, it will use the next available language in the list.

You can add languages to the Language & Text preferences list by clicking the Edit List button that appears below to the list. If you drag a language to the top of the list that is not one of the languages listed above, the Finder and applications included with Mac OS X will not display text in that language, but any other software you might have installed that has been localized for that language should be able to.

Learn more

You can read and write documents or view web pages in languages besides the languages listed above. For more information about using other languages, see the following topics which are also in Help Center (available from the Help menu): 

 

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