Mac Language, Region and Input Sources Settings

Learn how to set and add languages to your Mac so you can see different apps with different Language settings. Find out how to change things like number separators and date formats using the Region settings. Use Input Sources to change how your keyboard works.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at Language, Region, and Input Source Settings in macOS Ventura. 
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So sometimes you need to deal with different languages, regions, and also keyboards on your Mac. For instance you may move between countries or work on documents that come from around the world. You may have a keyboard that may be specific to a region but you want to switch it to a different region. Let's take a look at all those settings and how they work in macOS Ventura. 
So let's start by going to System Settings and then General. One of the options here is Language & Region. So this is where you would go to Add languages to your Mac. Languages are used by the Operating System and various apps for things like the Menu items, Buttons, all sorts of text everywhere. You could easily use the Plus button here and select another language from the list. Every time you add a new language it asks you if you want to make that the Default language or stick with the current default. You could also change the order of these languages. So you can select one and drag it up. If you drag one up to the top it will change the default language on your Mac. When you change the default language you need to log out and log back in or Restart for that change to take effect. Then you would see all of the interface elements on your Mac and probably in all the apps you use as well change to that language. 
Now when you have multiple languages here you also have the option to apply this to the Login Window. Since the Login Window is outside of any User Account it's possible to have several user accounts using different languages. So this allows you to say you want the selected language to be the language used by the Login Screen.
Now the order of languages here is important. If an app you're using doesn't have the preferred language then we use the first one in the list that it has that language for. So, for instance, if your primary language here was French but the app you're using only has interface elements for English and Spanish then it would take English and Spanish, whichever is next. The same will go for a lot of webpages as well. 
Now in addition to these settings you also can set a Region. A Region is really important because it allows you to make various decisions about how you want things to appear. You'll see these take immediate effect when you make changes. For instance, let me bring cup Calendar here. If I switch the first day of the week to Monday you could see it instantly changes the calendar app because the Calendar App listens to this setting when deciding how to display things. With the Weather App here I've got the temperature in Fahrenheit but if I were to switch to Celsius then the Weather App instantly  updates. In the Finder here if you narrow the column down then you'll see dates represented with slashes between the numbers. So I can change the date format, like that, and now you can see it uses that in the Finder instead. 
Now a couple of times I've already gotten the question, How can you switch the comma and period use in Numbers? For instance, in the United State here if you have a number like one thousand and in the cell formatting in Numbers if you set a 1,000 separator you get a comma. If I add some decimal places there you can see it uses a period for that.  Now you'd think the setting swapping comma and period would be here in this list. It actually is but it depends on what region you're using. So the United States region isn't marked by Apple as having more than one option. But if I were to switch to another region, like let's switch to France here, you could see now there's Number Format and with France as my Region I can choose a space as a thousand separator and a comma as the decimal point. Or, commas as a thousand separator and a period as the decimal point. If I switch this to Germany then I get periods as a thousand separator as one option. So I can switch to that. Notice here if I go back to Numbers it switches automatically. 
Notice also you get different date formats depending upon the Region. So here are the three different formats for Germany. The first two show the day first and then the month. But if I switch back to the United States you could see my date formats are only month and then day, or year, month, day with dashes. 
Now you have another option here at the bottom. It's for individual applications to have different languages. So I can select an Application if I played the Weather App and I could change that to use another language, to Danish for instance, and add that as a different app. Now when I run Weather you'll notice that the Menu items and everything are in Danish. Whereas if I go to another app, like say back into Numbers, everything here is in English. If we want to remove the customization for a single app you can select it and then hit the Minus button. 
There are a bunch of other places where you can specify a language. So at the bottom here you've got Translation Languages and you could actually download more translation languages to use. Also there's an On Device mode where it will always do the translation on your device. It won't send it in to Apple for a quick translation there. In Siri and Spotlight you could also set the language for Siri. Once you choose a language you can choose a voice as well. Also down under Keyboard if you look at Dictation you can choose a dictation language you can add from a variety of languages that Apple has available as being compatible with dictation. So if you're dictating text make sure this is set to the right language for you. 
Now you can also set language for Spellcheck. So if you go into an app, like Pages here, if you look under Edit and then Spelling & Grammar select Show Spelling & Grammar which is simply the Command, Shift, Semicolon key on US keyboards and then you'll see the Spellchecker appear. This is where you have the setting for Language. You can leave it at Automatic by Language. Which is what I have it here. That's why there's no spelling mistakes found here even though one line is in English and one line is in French. It will definitely find spelling mistakes if I were to add a character here, for instance, it knows that it is spelled wrong. If I were to switch from Automatic by Language to French you could see it sees a bunch of spelling mistakes in the English line now. If I switch to US English it's going to see a bunch of mistakes in the French line now. Only with Automatic by Language does it pickup that amusing one language here and one language there. 
You also have an Accessibility here under Voice Control the ability to set a language for Voice Control. You can add a language here like that. Then it appears in the list. Now another place you deal with language related settings is in Keyboard Settings. Go down to Keyboard Settings here, there is a section called Input Sources. So this deals with the specific type of keyboard you've got. If you bought your Mac in the United States you have a US keyboard. But if you bought it in another country you may have a keyboard specific to that country instead. You can Edit the input sources here and you can see a list of them. I've added a few here. If you select one of these you could see the keyboard layout for that particular type of keyboard. So, for instance, I can see Q and W are the top left letters. If I go to Canadian and British it is the same. But I switch to this keyboard here its got A and Z instead of Q and W there. If I leave it at that then when I actually type with those keys, even though it says Q and W on my US keyboard I'm going to get A and Z. 
Now if you go to All Input Sources here you're going to get all these options. One of them is Show Input Menu in the Menu Bar. I've got that turned On and you could see it right here. I can switch between the four keyboards I've chosen very easily now. A really neat thing you can do here is select Automatically Switch to a Document's Input Source. So I'm going to turn that On. So you can see I'm in this document here. If I change this document to use this particular type of keyboard, you can see it indicates it there. Now I'm going to create a new document. In the second document I'm going to switch to a US keyboard. Now when I switch between these two documents notice how it automatically switches to the keyboard for each one. That's all because of this switch right here. 
Now you also have a language selection here for Spelling that looks a lot like what we saw in Pages before. That's because this is the default here. So Automatic By Language is the Default. If I change it to US English, notice if I switch back to Pages here it now says US English here in Spelling & Grammar. So any app that actually has the default Spelling & Grammar control will obey the default method from this System Settings. 
Another setting that you've got under Keyboard you should probably know about is, if you go to Keyboard Shortcuts, there's a section here for Input Sources. You see a Control Space selects the previous Input Source and Control Option Space is the next one. So it is the same as switching here. It is just something you can do with your hands on the keyboard. So Control Space brings up this list here and I can continue to look through the list. When I get to the one I want I just release Control. 
So that's a look at all the different settings for Language, Region, and Input Sources in macOS Ventura. Ihope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 2 Responses to “Mac Language, Region and Input Sources Settings”

Lujza

9 months ago

Settings: the primary language is US. Added Hungarian keyboard as an additional input source. "Hungarian" is set as a secondary language in "Language and Region". Region is set to US. However, on startup, the HU input source is displayed as default. In the language settings, I'm missing the option to click "Apply to Login Window". According to Apple support,
"Note: If the Settings pop-up menu doesn’t appear, it means the login window is already set to use the primary language."
I'm lost. :(

Gary Rosenzweig

Lujza: the next step I would try is Apple Support.

Comments Closed.

Mac Language, Region and Input Sources Settings

Comments: 2 Responses to “Mac Language, Region and Input Sources Settings”

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