Get iOS current language (including country code)

Question

I need to get a string like en_US or es_ES in iOS.

The obvious method is to use [NSLocale currentLocale] and get the language info from there. However, that gives you the "region format" and not the actual device language, which means that if you have the device language in english but the region format as "spain", it'll erroneously report es_ES.

If you need the device language you must do this instead: [[NSLocale preferredLanguages] objectAtIndex:0]

However, that only gives you the language, so you get something like en or es, without the country code at the end.

How would I get the country code correctly, like Safari does?

Answer 1

Try with this code:

NSString *locale = [[NSLocale currentLocale] localeIdentifier];
NSRange startRange = [locale rangeOfString:@"_"];
NSString *result = [locale stringByReplacingCharactersInRange:NSMakeRange(0, startRange.length+1) withString:[[NSLocale preferredLanguages] objectAtIndex:0]];
DebugLog(@"current locale: %@", result);

Answer 2

Ok, seeing getting the right info out of iOS is probably not possible, here's a hackish solution but which gives the output I needed. It's not complete and it won't give precise output in some cases (like for arabic), but it's the best I've been able to get.

const string lang = [[[NSLocale preferredLanguages] objectAtIndex:0] UTF8String];

// Search the language with country code in the langs map
static std::map<string, string> langMap;
static bool initialized = false;
if(!initialized) {
    #define LANG(l, c) langMap.insert(std::make_pair(#l, #c))

    LANG(en, en-us); LANG(es, es-es); LANG(fr, fr-fr); LANG(de, de-de);
    LANG(ja, ja-jp); LANG(nl, nl-nl); LANG(it, it-it); LANG(pt, pt-br);
    LANG(da, da-dk); LANG(fi, fi-fi); LANG(nb, nb-no); LANG(sv, sv-se);
    LANG(ko, ko-kr); LANG(ru, ru-ru); LANG(pl, pl-pl); LANG(tr, tr-tr);
    LANG(uk, uk-ua); LANG(hr, hr-hr); LANG(cs, cs-cz); LANG(el, el-gr);
    LANG(he, he-il); LANG(ro, ro-ro); LANG(sk, sk-sk); LANG(th, th-th);
    LANG(ca, ca-es); LANG(hu, hu-hu); LANG(vi, vi-vn);
    LANG(zh-Hans, zh-cn); LANG(pt-PT, pt-pt); LANG(id, id); LANG(ms, ms);
    LANG(zh-Hant, zh-tw); LANG(en-GB, en-gb); LANG(ar, ar);

    #undef LANG
    initialized = true;
}

map<string,string>::iterator it = langMap.find(lang);
if( it != langMap.end() ){
    return it->second;
}

// Didn't find a country code, default to the lang name
return lang;

Answer 3

Check the below code:

NSArray *langs = [NSLocale preferredLanguages];
for (NSString *lang in langs) {
     NSLog(@"%@: %@ %@",lang, [NSLocale canonicalLanguageIdentifierFromString:lang],    [[[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:lang] displayNameForKey:NSLocaleIdentifier value:lang]);
}

Answer 4

Simply do this:

NSString *language = [[NSLocale preferredLanguages] objectAtIndex:0];
NSString *locale = [[NSLocale currentLocale] objectForKey: NSLocaleCountryCode];

NSString *formattedStr = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@_%@",language, locale];
NSLog(@"%@", formattedStr); // Display en_US for example

Answer 5

Swift

NSLocale.preferredLanguages()[0] as String

Output would be like

en-GB

Source

Answer 6

I am using this at the moment. I have run a few test cases and it seems ok, However I am not convinced that it is a robust solution. I am surprised not to find a clear answer to this simple problem. I would not recommend my solution but I hope it can generate discussion.

NSLocale *locale = [NSLocale currentLocale];
NSString *countryCode = [locale objectForKey: NSLocaleCountryCode];

NSString *language = [[NSLocale preferredLanguages] firstObject];
NSString *myLocale = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@_%@",language,countryCode];
NSLocale *userLocale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:myLocale];

NSDate* now = [NSDate date];

NSDateFormatter *formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
NSString *dateFormat = [NSDateFormatter dateFormatFromTemplate:@"E MMM d yyyy HH:mm" options:0 locale:userLocale];