change iphone language so app launches in respective locale?

Question

is there a way to change the iphone International language in an automated way so that when we launch the app it shows up localized for the target locale (ll-CC)?

Thanks a bunch for your help!

Answer 1

Not sure what you mean by automated in this sense. You'll need to internationalize your app and then provide localized translations. If you have localized your app for a particular language then it will work in locales that use that language.

Basics on internationalization (iOS and OS X) can be found here.

Answer 2

Yes there is! I actually wrote a small bash script to do just that for my UI Automation-powered app screenshot taker. Grab it from here:

https://github.com/jonathanpenn/ui-screen-shooter/blob/master/bin/choose_sim_language

Feel free to explore it to see how it works. To use it you just need to run it with the locale code you choose.

./choose_sim_language en

All the simulator versions will be set to the one you gave it. Run the script without any parameters to have it print out the current language.

Answer 3

If you're targeting the actual device, you need to overwrite AppleLanguages preference:

[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setObject: [NSArray arrayWithObjects:lang, nil] forKey:@"AppleLanguages"];

Check a complete working solution here: http://aggressive-mediocrity.blogspot.com.es/2010/03/custom-localization-system-for-your.html

You don't need custom localization macros as indicated on that article, just #undef them and #define them to use your class.

You'll need some mechanism to change the language in the app: something in the UI or just an environment variable (set it in the command line when you launch Instruments, if that what you're doing).