I somehow changed the language from English to Japanese on my Apple iPhone 4; how do I change it back?
An interesting problem, for sure! To solve it you really need to be able to read Japanese, but since it sounds like you cannot, the alternative plan is to understand how the different screens in the iPhone iOS preferences are set up and basically tap based on region location rather than knowing what it actually says.
Kind of a leap of faith strategy, if you will, but it’ll work!
To show you how to change your language from Japanese back to English, the first thing I’ll do is show you how to go through the screens to change your language from English to something else, so when we go into the Japanese screens, you’ll have a sense of what’s going on.
Ready? Let’s go!
Once you tap on “Settings” you should already be familiar with this screen:
As I’ve highlighted, you want to tap on “General”, then scroll down a bit to find…
You guessed it, “International”. Tap on that and you’ll find that iOS is quite a capable little operating system, able to change a ton of elements to work with different languages and locales.
We want “Language”, which is the primary language that’ll be used for every prompt, error message and system information:
Tap on “Language” and you’ll see a remarkable number of choices. They seem relatively random but in fact they’re always shown in the same order, with the current language as the topmost option. (You’ll see what I mean in a minute):
I’ll tap on Japanese to switch the phone over and all of a sudden everything looks remarkably different. Pretty darn cool, actually!
I’ll find the “Settings” icon and tap on it to see what the primary Settings menu looks like in Japanese:
Now we’re going to simply have to count entries or pay close attention to icons. Fortunately, the little gear icon looks the same, so that’s our first tap. It gets us to the “General” menu:
This time we’ll want to tap on the third entry in the third section (“International”). Do that and you’ll see the various options:
Recall that the first of these options is “Language”. Tap on it and you’ll see a list of languages – in their own native words – which will make it easy to switch to “English”:
Tap on “English” and be prepared, the phone has to reconfigure itself:
After a few seconds you should be in great shape, back to English and ready to go!
Hello Dave,
pls my friend gave me an Iphone 6 from korea and the Language sittings is in the language which already has an icloud id .
pls help me how do I reset it
Thank You
Help me please!! This doesn’t work on iphone5
Thank you, I was given an iphone but had the language set to Japanese and I didnt know what to do till i got to your page.
thank you so much!
Hi Dave,
Oh My God! You are the best! I wanted to try some symbols on my iphone 5 and one of my friend told me that I have to switch the language to Japanese to be able to do so! I did and had no clue what to do! You are life saver! Thank you very much for you helpful info. It is almost 1:30 am and I was searching around to find a solution and thank God I found this page!
Hello! Please I want you to help me urgently. My dad bought me an Iphone 4s from China and I can’t operate it with Chinese language. I’ve changed the language to English but all the applications are still reading Chinese. Help me Dave ;-(
Hi! Can anyone help me? i got an NTTDOCOMO phone from a friend in Japan and it is locked and it is in Japanese. Can anyone tell me how to unlock it and change the setting to read english? I can’t use it here in Ghana. Thanks guys!
Sir, You are not only a genius, but also a life saver. The panic button was well and truly pressed for a while until you came up with the goods. Thanks Very Much !!!!!!
Just a follow-up, the iPhone 4 that my niece gave me is lock (JAPAN) that’s why I can’t use it in the Philippines. Can anyone help me how to unlock it? thanks guys.
Hi! Can anyone help me? My niece gave me iPhone 4 from Japan so it is locked. Can anyone tell me how to unlock it? I can’t use it here. Thanks guys!
I’ve recently picked up the iPhone 3and when i access the app store app, iTunes, and in a couple other places – the language is in French. I’ve verified the language under the ‘international’ setting, is in fact, English. Not quite sure where else to adjust this. Help?!
Dave, thank you–I did the same thing trying to do my Chinese lesson homework and spent most of the afternoon trying to get the phone back to English. Just happened upon your website and it worked. I’m back in business. Thank you very much. Your directions were clear–the key was to see the screens because obviously if you don’t read characters, directions in English just don’t matter!
Thanks! You saved me and now I will once again attempt my homework.
You are the best!!!! ME being a stupid person, i thought it would be cool to change it to Japanese and i also now enough Japanese, I thought, that i could got through it easily. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you sir!
Thnx ur a life saver, i was almost gonna die if my dad saw my iphone, he’ll be like wth did u do with ur iphone. btw i’m japanese freak, like i watch japanese dramas, anime, manga, and i was curious to change my launguage in japanese and i did it and then i was like this’s awesome and wen i tried to change it back i was like idk HELPP and i typed it in youtube and they didn’t have it. so i typed in google and i found this. THANKS SO MUCH!!!, i have no words to describe. LOVE YA.
Hey Dave,
I’ve recently picked up the iPhone 4s, and when i access the app store app, iTunes, and in a couple other places – the language is in French. I’ve verified the language under the ‘international’ setting, is in fact, English. Not quite sure where else to adjust this. Help?!