iOS 18 update brings multilingual support to lock screen, keyboard, search

Users can type in Latin text, get suggestions for all three languages based on users’ input without switching

Tech Desk - Jul 02, 2024

An undated image showing the iOS 18 interface. — Apple

The tech giant, Apple unfolded iOS 18 earlier at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). The company has unveiled two developer betas in the last few weeks with expanded support for various new languages across the lock screen, Siri, keyboard, and search on iOS 18.

Currently, with the new upgrade, users can customise the lock screen to display time in various numerals with support for 12 languages: Arabic, Arabic Indic, Bangla, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Meitei, Odia, Ol Chiki, and Telugu.

The keyboard on iOS received a pack of upgrades, adding support for trilingual predictive typing across the system. The users can look at additional language scripts on the left and right of the suggestion field and switch between them easily.

Moreover, the users can type in Latin text and get suggestions for all three languages based on users’ input without switching.

In the Messages app, if the users have different threads going on in multiple languages, the keyboard will recall the last language that users utilised for a particular thread.

The trilingual keyboard sports English, Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu. Moreover, the Cupertino-based tech giant has added support for a Korean and English multiscript keyboard on iOS 18.

iOS 18 also brings enhanced language search, in which users can search for various spellings of similar-sounding words in that language. Notably, the users can search for both “चंद्र” and “चन्द्र” in Hindi. The new language search is offered for Assamese, Bangla, Devanagari, and Gujarati.

Gadinsider has mentioned below some other language-related upgrades with iOS 18.