WhatsApp is the most popular communication platform in many parts of the world. A lot of people living in multilingual areas rely on the app, too, with them often seamlessly switching between languages and dialects in everyday life. Phones and technology don't make that process so easy, though, with rigid language selection options and inflexible system-wide defaults. The latest beta version of WhatsApp is looking to change that. It now allows you to pick your preferred language independently of the one set for your whole smartphone.
As first spotted by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp beta version 2.22.9.13 introduced the language switcher to the first few testers, with version 2.22.10.2 rolling it out much more widely. We’ve been able to corroborate the findings on version 2.22.9.13 ourselves, with WhatsApp allowing us to switch to a different language. The option to pick your language can be found in the three-dot menu in the top right corner of WhatsApp under Settings ⇾ App language. The feature was previously discovered in an app teardown, so it’s no surprise that WhatsApp is now starting to test it in the beta channel.
If you want to try the language switcher for yourself, make sure you join the WhatsApp beta on the Play Store. If it’s already full, you can alternatively get the latest beta version from APK Mirror.
WhatsApp is by far not the first app to allow for independent language selection. The most prominent example is likely Google Maps, which introduced the option in early 2021. In any case, Google is looking to make per-app language switching a system-wide feature in Android 13, where you will be able to pick your preferred language for each app individually in the system settings. This will make in-app switchers like the one in WhatsApp moot in the long run, but it’s going to take a long time for all Android devices to be updated to the upcoming release, so it’s great to see this stop-gap solution.