The little joys of iOS 13

I can’t remember one feature being mentioned on stage during the iOS 13 introduction at WWDC: you can control the language of apps on iOS 13 individually in Settings.app, provided that the app itself supports more than one language.

While I strongly prefer to use English as the primary language on operating system level1, there are some apps that I always wished I could run in my native German language.

But unfortunately, this was not possible in iOS 12 and before. Unless an app itself offered the ability to switch to a different language (and German was a choice) you were out of luck.

But again, in some cases it makes much more sense to run an app in German. A prominent example is the DB Navigator2 app by Deutsche Bahn, or any other public transport app of any German-speaking city that I regularly travel to. It just feels more … natural.

I’m very happy about this unheralded little nugget. It will certainly improve my iOS experience a lot.

  1. When I started using computers – for a long time – the choice was to either have English skills or stop using computers.
  2. Don’t worry, the English localization is much better that the proverbial English skills of the DB staff that people sometimes make fun of (albeit in a good-natured fashion).
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