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WilsonNM

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 16, 2023
25
14
I feel dumb that I can't figure this out, but I can't figure it out. :(

The language in the Apple Music app on my Mac has been switched to Chinese and I don't know how to get it back to English.

This is not a change I deliberately made. Presumably it happened some time while I was traveling in China last month. But I've been back in the U.S. for two weeks now and it hasn't switched back. I even made a purchase in the iTunes Store a few days ago and just got the email receipt today, and the receipt was in Chinese.

Can anyone help me?
 
Until someone with experience answers, I see that in Settings, General, Language & Region, there is an option at the bottom to add customized language settings for individual applications. If Music is listed there, that might be the reason.
 
Unfortunately that doesn't work because the actual language of the app seems to still be English, it's the web content (Apple Music and the iTunes Store) that is in Chinese. Using those settings, I was actually able to change the app UI language to Spanish, but the web content remained in Chinese.

Though the Account Settings accessible from the bottom left corner seem to be in Chinese as well:

musicapp.jpg


This is a strange problem :confused:
 
  • Wow
Reactions: radow and Nermal
I'm not familiar with Apple Music itself, but if it works like iTunes did then it seems like you have the app in English but you're in the China "store" (or whatever the Music equivalent is). Can you see a Chinese flag or "中国" text anywhere (bottom corner, perhaps)? If so, click it and see whether you can change it back to the US.
 
^I actually checked in the bottom right corner and it said 美国 (Měiguó), a.k.a. the Chinese name for America o_O

So I signed out of Apple Music and signed back in--still in Chinese. Then I clicked on my account information again (what I screenshotted above), I got a "Something went wrong" message, I force quit the Music app, restarted it, and now it's in English.

So...problem solved? Not sure exactly what happened there, but it appears signing out and signing back in did reset it somehow. I probably should've tried that first.
 
This happened to me as well - App Store update lists are strangely in Chinese despite device region and App Store region/language are not. I'm now fairly certain that it's an yet undocumented countryd behavior.
 
"and answers about which country nearby devices believe they are in" - this seems a bit concerning. Once upon a time when I was using Google Maps (on Android, I think) it suddenly switched into Japanese for a block or two, then back to English. I can only assume that someone's Wi-Fi AP was set to Japan.
 
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