Complete MacOS Reinstall

[CptKirk]

. Hi guys. I made the switch to Mac above 6 years ago and haven’t looked back. I’ve been very happy and recently looked to add a MacBook Air for mobility and a backup if my Mac Mini dies. I live in Quebec and picked up a used MacBook Air for a pretty good price

It came installed with High Sierra in French. When I got it home I went to the Mac App Store and downloaded a copy of high Sierra and created a bootable USB drive. I reinstalled th OS but it was still French first I changed the language in settings and works fine.

I’d like to set it up as an English machine if possible. The keyboard is an English keyboard so I assume that it was shipped that way. When I did the reinstall did I just overwrite the existing OS. Is there a better way to do this? Or is this hardwired to be a French Mac and will just have to live with it?

As I said, I changed the language settings so it operates fine. But any kind of message comes up system wise is in French.

Thanks

 

[chscag]

If you completely erased the hard drive first and then installed High Sierra with the USB drive, it would have asked you when you first accessed the MBA what language, time zone, etc. Setting it for English at that time would have resolved the problem.

 

[Lunder89]

When you boot from the USB drive, if it does not ask your language, you can set it yourself. Open the menu "File" and then "Choose language".

 

[chscag]

Note that booting from a USB drive is different from "installing from a USB drive". When installed that way and the Mac is first turned on, it will ask about language, location, time zone, etc. And if the installer is one of the popular ones available, the language will default to US English when the Mac is first turned on.