Getting current device language in iOS?

Question

I'd like to show the current language that the device UI is using. What code would I use?

I want this as an NSString in fully spelled out format. (Not @"en_US")

EDIT: For those driving on by, there are a ton of useful comments here, as the answer has evolved with new iOS releases.

Answer 1

The solutions provided will actually return the current region of the device - not the currently selected language. These are often one and the same. However, if I am in North America and I set my language to Japanese, my region will still be English (United States). In order to retrieve the currently selected language, you can do:

NSString * language = [[NSLocale preferredLanguages] firstObject];

This will return a two letter code for the currently selected language. "en" for English, "es" for Spanish, "de" for German, etc. For more examples, please see this Wikipedia entry (in particular, the 639-1 column):

List of ISO 639-1 codes

Then it's a simple matter of converting the two letter codes to the string you would like to display. So if it's "en", display "English".

Hope this helps someone that's looking to differentiate between region and currently selected language.

EDIT

Worth to quote the header information from NSLocale.h:

+ (NSArray *)preferredLanguages NS_AVAILABLE(10_5, 2_0); // note that this list does not indicate what language the app is actually running in; the [NSBundle mainBundle] object determines that at launch and knows that information

People interested in app language take a look at @mindvision's answer

Answer 2

Swift

To get current language of device

NSLocale.preferredLanguages()[0] as String

To get application language

NSBundle.mainBundle().preferredLocalizations[0] as NSString

Note:

It fetches the language that you have given in CFBundleDevelopmentRegion of info.plist

if CFBundleAllowMixedLocalizations is true in info.plist then first item of CFBundleLocalizations in info.plist is returned

Answer 3

Swift 3

let locale = Locale.current
let code = (locale as NSLocale).object(forKey: NSLocale.Key.countryCode) as! String?
print(code!)

Answer 4

Obviously, the solutions relying, for example, on

[[NSLocale preferredLanguages] objectAtIndex:0]

usually work fine and return the current device language.

But it could be misleading in some cases :

If the app in which you want to get this value has already changed the language, for example with this kind of code :

NSString *lg = @"en"; // or anything like @"en", @"fr", etc.
[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] 
    setObject:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:lg, nil]  
    forKey:@"AppleLanguages"]

In this case, [NSLocale preferredLanguages] actually returns the preferred language set (and used) in this particular app, not the current device language !

And... in this case the only way to properly get the actual current device language (and not that previously set in the app), is to firstly clear the key @"appleLanguages" in NSUserDefaults, like this :

[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults]removeObjectForKey:@"AppleLanguages"];

Then, [NSLocale preferredLanguages] now returns the correct value.

Hope this help.

Answer 5

For Swift 3:

NSLocale.preferredLanguages[0] as String

Answer 6

For MonoTouch C# developers use:

NSLocale.PreferredLanguages.FirstOrDefault() ?? "en"

Note: I know this was an iOS question, but as I am a MonoTouch developer, the answer on this page led me in the right direction and I thought I'd share the results.