Android 16 Introduces Independent Region and Measurement System Settings

Android, with billions of active users, is the world’s most popular mobile operating system. It supports nearly every widely spoken language, making it accessible globally. Traditionally, apps determine your region based on the system language. This approach works for most users, but it can be problematic for international students, immigrants, and temporary workers who want to see units relevant to their current location while keeping their phone in a language they prefer.

To address these issues, Google is planning to separate region settings from system language preferences in Android 16. With this change, users can use their preferred language while still seeing dates, numbers, and measurements formatted for their current region.

For instance, an American student studying in Japan might want to set their phone’s region to Japan to see dates, currency, temperatures, and other units as they typically appear in Japan. Currently, they would need to change their phone’s language to Japanese or rely on individual app settings for unit customization. Android 16 will allow users to set their phone’s language to English and the region to Japan independently.

Currently, these new independent region settings are not available in Android 16 Beta 1. However, through some technical adjustments, it’s possible to activate them under Settings > System > Language & region. This process also reveals the revamped “languages” page with “regional preferences” settings on the main page rather than a separate submenu. Additionally, a new “measurements” page lets users choose their preferred measurement system from options including the default regional system, metric, US imperial, or UK imperial systems.

These enhancements build upon Android’s regional preferences feature, introduced in Android 14. Before regional preferences, apps determined your region based on the system language. Some apps offered unit customization, but many did not, leaving users with default settings they might not prefer. The regional preferences feature aimed to centralize unit customization, but the new features in Android 16 take this concept a step further by allowing independent region settings.

The new “region” menu should also solve the problem of limited unit customization. By setting your preferred region independently of the system language, apps will display units in your region’s preferred format, even for those units not customizable system-wide. This includes units in apps like Pixel Weather. Previously, users had to change their system language to achieve this. For example, if your device language is English but your region is Germany, weather apps would display wind speed in km/h instead of mph.