Solved: How to get WeChat in English on Android

I am a user of WeChat since many years. WeChat is a Chinese mobile phone application available for both iOS and Android. I use it to chat with people living in Peoples Republic of China. As you probably know, the common chat tools we use in Sweden and many other countries are not available in China. WeChat is almost the only alternative to chat with them and this is the reason why I use it. As an extra privacy safeguard I use a separate phone for WeChat.

I have moved my mobile life from iOS (iPhone) to Android. Or to be more precise, to /e/OS; an almost de-googled operating system built upon the AOSP Android Open Source Platform and Lineage OS. My phone is an older one and runs on Android 11 with development ongoing to be upgradable to Android 13. If I had used the phone with its native (stock) variant of Google-Android, it had stopped at Android 10 with no Android security updates any longer. But now my phone is up to date with security and other developments.

Now to my unexpected problem.

When I had installed WeChat on my /e/OS, I could not switch menu text from Chinese language to English in WeChat. Despite I changed it in WeChat settings. I tested German as well but no success. Swedish is not available in WeChat. I had my phone set to Swedish in the system settings, I added English, but it did not help. I tried several attempts with variants in the settings. I read reviews in the Google Play store that several other had same problem. So, this was in a way a relief that my issue was likely not related to that I use /e/OS instead of Google-Android.

Finally I found out a work around:

• Uninstall WeChat
• System settings change language settings to English as first, primary language
• Restart the phone
• Install WeChat again

Now, the phone is in English. But also WeChat is now in English! So, the issue with WeChat settings to English language not working has a workaround to set English in Android system settings. I have not tried what happens if I now change to Swedish as primary language, it is fine for me to have English on this phone.

Henrik Hemrin

3 February 2024