LLearn Japanese

PSA: If you’re on Mac/iOS, you’re also likely using the default font for Chinese kanji and not Japanese Kanji

  • February 9, 2023

Saw the [post about Windows](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/10wbzzu/psa_if_youre_on_windows_youre_likely_using_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), figured I’d share how to get around the same problem on Mac/iOS.

If Mac/iOS is running in English, by default the system font renders kanji in their simplified Chinese form, instead of their Japanese form.

A quick way to check is to look at this character: 誤. If the bottom-right looks like ハ, it’s using the Japanese version. If it looks like 天, it’s using the Chinese version.

The fix is simply to add Japanese to your list of preferred languages, right below English.

On iOS: Open the **Settings** app, go to **General** \> **Language & Region**, and tap on **Add Language**. Select Japanese, and then make sure it’s right below English in the list of Preferred Languages.

On macOS (latest version): Open **System Settings**, then go to **General** \> **Language & Region**, and tap on the **+** to add a new language. Select Japanese, and then make sure it’s right below English in the list of Preferred Languages.

It’ll be different in older versions of macOS but I don’t have any machines to check on, so if anyone wants to give me the steps I’ll add them here.

6 comments

  1. Thank you. This helps a lot. Would you know the name of the font to use? The browser uses the correct font, but another application I use is using the Chinese font (but I can select the font to use).

  2. > Select Japanese, and then make sure it’s right below English in the list of Preferred Languages.

    Japanese can actually be anywhere on the list as long as it’s before Chinese and Korean (and maybe Vietnamese?).

  6. You’re really not gonna encounter this too often. If you’re on a Japanese website, it probably has metadata indicating it’s Japanese so the system will use the correct font. If you’ve set an app to run in Japanese, it’ll use the Japanese font.

    As the developer of Japanese dictionary/learning apps with lots of Chinese users, I make sure anywhere in my apps where I know Japanese is displayed I explicitly choose a Japanese font. So the only places where it uses the system font are places where I don’t know what language to expect. For example, the text area where people can write notes on a dictionary entry. Or the navigation bar titles, since depending on the screen a title might be in your native language or in Japanese.

    Places like Reddit, where the website doesn’t really know whether to expect posts to be written in Chinese vs Japanese is another good place it might make a difference.

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