Android not using/finding my Hebrew localization.

Question

I'm working to localize my app for a number of language. Spanish is working great but Hebrew isn't showing up.

What confuses me is if I put the contents of my Hebrew strings folder in the Spanish folder(values-es) it works great. Spanish in my Hebrew folder(values-he) does not work though...

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Moir

Answer 1

Hebrew is locale like 'iw', and also 'he'.

As the @klausw mentioned in his answer:

you better store duplicate copies in both values-iw/ and values-he/ just to make sure it works in all devices.

Houseleek

Generally speaking it is not true, see Error 454's link. As of Android, it's not true neither. In the emulator I tried on 2.2 and 4.2 and both iw, he work. – Vaginate

I've created a values-iw, values-iw-rIL, values-he, and values-he-rIL folders, installed my app on a real devices (Nexus 1, Nexus5), but when I set the device's language the Hebrew, I see the english strings and not the hebrew ones. I'm using Android Studio 1.5 on a macbook. Any ideas as to why my app behaves in this way? can it be an encoding issue with the hebrew texts? – Holbert

Answer 2

rogcg is right for most Android devices, but apparently the Samsung Galaxy S2 incompatibly uses locale "he" for Hebrew and ignores values-iw/. If you want to be compatible with those devices too, you need to store duplicate copies in both values-iw/ and values-he/. See also https://mcmap.net/q/909651/-hebrew-ui-in-emulator.

Kristinakristine

Answer 3

Bear in mind that as of Summer 2021 bundle (.aab) file is required instead of the .apk file. This change brings optimization to many things but some language related problems as well: if your device does not support a specific language, it will not be downloaded from the Play Store.

Check the solution here.

Niki