When we’re using macOS, sometime we need to open an application in another language because of bad localization.

I had this experience while I’m using QQ few days ago. Since English is my system default language, and QQ doesn’t support to switch language from its settings, also its English translation is really hard to understand. So I have to figure out a way to change QQ’s language to Chinese. (I’m a Chinese speaker)

Via Command Line

Open terminal, and type

1
defaults write $(mdls -name kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier -raw /Applications/QQ.app) AppleLanguages "(zh-Hans)"

You need to update QQ.app to the application name, also (zh-Hans) is the desired language name. To find out all languages this application supports, open its content package, and find those languages name under /Contents/Resources directory.

Via Language Switcher

The way above is to change default language permanently, but however if you only want to change language for one-time use. Try this free application, Language Switcher. It can help you open any application from its support languages. The bad thing is that it only support one-time use, you will still see the system dafault language if you open next time.

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