Skip to main content

Implementing In-app and pre-locale language selection in Android

Modern Android App Architecture

One of the essential features for a globalized app is the ability to provide users with the option to choose their preferred language within the application. In this blog post, we will guide you through the process of implementing in-app language selection in an Android app.

Step 1: Create Locale String Resource

Create a string resource file for each respective locale by navigating to res > new > Android Resource File. Select Locale and create a 
string.xml
file. Copy and paste the translations of your app content into these files.

Step 2: Configure Locale Preferences

In the res/xmlfolder, create a new file called locales_config.xml and specify the locales of your choice. for example look at the following code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <locale-config xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"> <locale android:name="en" /> //English <locale android:name="ta" /> //Tamil <locale android:name="hi" /> //Hindi <locale android:name="ml" /> //Malayalam </locale-config>

Step 3: Add resource.properties file

Switch to project view and in the resfolder, create a new file called resources.properties and specify the default locales of your choice, this will be the fallback locale if the requested one is un-available,for example look at the following code:

unqualifiedResLocale=en

Step 4: Update Module Gradle File

The list of language tags need to added to resourseConfiguration make sure you add all the language tags, have shared the updated code below as per my sample app:

android { ... androidResources { generateLocaleConfig = true } ... defaultConfig { ... resourceConfigurations.plus(listOf("ta", "en", "hi", "your-language-tag")) } }

Step 5: Manifest Configuration

You can let the device handle the locales, for that we are going to use a service called androidx.appcompat.app.AppLocalesMetadataHolderService with the following configuration, you can just copy paste the following code

<application ...> <service android:name="androidx.appcompat.app.AppLocalesMetadataHolderService" android:enabled="false" android:exported="false"> <meta-data android:name="autoStoreLocales" android:value="true" /> </service> </application>

Step 6: Implement Locale Selection Function

fun localeSelection(context: Context, localeTag: String) { if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.TIRAMISU) { context.getSystemService(LocaleManager::class.java).applicationLocales = LocaleList.forLanguageTags(localeTag) } else { AppCompatDelegate.setApplicationLocales( LocaleListCompat.forLanguageTags(localeTag) ) } }

Step 7: Usage Example

val context = LocalContext.current Button(onClick = { localeSelection(context = context, localeTag = Locale("ta").toLanguageTag()) }) { Text(text = "Tamil") }

That's it! You've successfully implemented in-app language selection in your Android app. Feel free to check out the sample app on GitHub for a hands-on example.

If you encounter any issues or have questions, please leave a comment, and will do my best to assist you.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Designer PDF Viewer - HackerRank Problems

Difficulty: EASY Problem : The objective here is to find the size of the highlighted area, and we are given the size's of all the alphabets, we have to find the largest alphabet in the highlighted word and then calculate the size of the rectangle so if the tallest character is 3 then the size of the box will be 3 * number of characters given. Visual representation of the selection : abc def ghij Inputs An array with the sizes of all alphabets a-z in order. A String of highlighted words. Important points to note The array which holds the height of each character in ascending order which means the arrays 0th index will have the height of a 1st index will have the height of b and so on and so forth in the end the hight of z will be there so it's easy to locate each character. A String with the highlighted word. This means we have got the characters inside the rectangle, all we have to find is ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Literals of Base numbers in Java ( Octal , Hexadecimal, Decimal)

1. Overview: A literal key indicates the compiler how to interpret the value of the given data type, for numbers we can calculate the value by using Octal representation or hexadecimal representation but just typing out a hexadecimal value to an int will throw us an error because the compiler has no idea how to handle it but if we assign the java specified prefix for the required bases with some literals then the compiler will not throw us any error as it understands how to interpret the value.  Base Litrals Values Example Eg. Value Decimal none 0-9 int x = 10; x is 10 Octal 0 (zero) as the prefix 0-7 int x = 12; x is 10 Hexadecimal 0x or (zero) along with an x 0-9 and a-f or A-F int x = 0XA; x is 10 Binary or Base(2) Allowed Digits 0 and 1 int i = 10; and now the variable i has value 10. i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Array List - Collections Framework in Java - DSA

Gist: An array list can store individual objects by following insertion order, here the initial capacity is 10 by default but can be modified as per the requirement, once the array list reaches its load factor then internal all the elements of the current array is copied to a new array with the new capacity and the reference variable will now be referring to this new array list and the old array will be dealt by the garbage collector. Hierarchical order Type of constructors Empty argument constructor or the default constructor is the same as invoking any other object here a new ArrayList is created with a default size of 10. Below is the most commonly used constructor by beginners and others alike. ArrayList array = new ArrayList(); //array has a capacity of 10 The default constructor above will allot only 10 slots but if you want the initial size to be 20 or 1000 you can do so with the following constructor this is ideal w...
Post a Comment
Read more