Cyrillic characters showing up in Mac User Guide

A website cookie for the apple.com domain might get set with a language identifier, which may render the chosen page in the wrong language over and over again, re-directing to a different language version than the URL was for. You can delete cookies (“website data”) for the apple.com domain to start over freshly, or (easier) use a secondary browser that hasn’t been “infected” with that cookie yet.

Next time, when following a link from Google or any other search engine, see if you can spot the language (and region) before clicking, by hovering the mouse pointer over the link, then look at the status line at the bottom. That language identifier would be part of the URL: for many Apple support documents like: /en-ca/, /en-us/, /de-de/, /en-kz/, /ru-kz/, /kk-kz/, etc.; although some Apple guides use a modified URL for the US English version. Some guides may have a mix of region language and English (i.e. not fully translated at this time).

That language identifier in the URL can be edited in between Copy-Paste and Enter, so that you never actually visit the unintended language version, and don’t set the unintended wrong language cookie.

I wish Apple did better/​more flexible for all this, but it is what it is for now.

Lucas1948 wrote:

I never knew I could do that. I clicked on the link you shared, scrolled to the bottom and clicked on "Canada (English)."

The only time that button at the bottom is useful is when you are looking at products. If you don't change it to your country, it will show prices in US dollars, not higher Canadian dollars. Sometimes there will be another country banner at the top, but not always. An easy way to tell when a website like this is confusing is when it needs multiple controls.

The only time I ever change that control at the bottom is when someone from the EU is complaining about prices and I have to do their VAT math for them.

Apple sells all over the world. The product pages and prices must be country-specific. As in the case of the EU, that's sometimes mandated by law. So you don't want to change your country unless it's wrong.

That took me to the Choose Your Country or Region page. I saw many choices, although not all the possible countries and languages. I scrolled down and clicked on "United States (English)," but nothing changed.

Earlier—just for fun—I clicked on "Deutschland" and got the page all in German. Then I tried to revert to United States, but It stubbornly refused to switch back.

Just avoid that button. Apple actually has a very effective setting for this. It's just that virtually no one knows about it. They only discover it when Google scrambles links like this.

Review Urquhart1244's post. Look for that locale code in the URL. Delete it and press return.

Apple web servers have a nice feature where they detect the language your web browser is using and will serve pages to you in that language. But if you manually put in a language override, then it honours that and gives you the language you requested. So when Google et al. publishes deep, language-specific links, and you click on them, then you get Kazakhstan. Just delete the that locale code and it will give you Canadian English or French, depending on your settings. If only Canadian government web sites could do that too.

Lucas1948 wrote:

A few minutes ago, I pulled up the Mac User Guide and saw this—

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/298f291e-901c-444d-b015-6dae834474d7

The information I was looking for is in English, but can anybody explain why I see lines of text rendered with Cyrillic characters ... Russian? Do I have a problem?

Try changing the location and compare your results...(lower right corner)

Turn Power Nap on or off on Mac - Apple Support

Turn Power Nap on or off on Mac - Apple Support (CA)

Lucas1948 wrote:

The information I was looking for is in English, but can anybody explain why I see lines of text rendered with Cyrillic characters ... Russian? Do I have a problem?

You don't have a problem. It's just that Apple tends to rely on Google too much. Google often serves up random odd-language variants. And if you aren't using Google, then other services are just as bad. Alas, I can't recommend some Apple alternative because Apple totally can't do search at all. Apple's got a captive audience, yet they still rely on unreliable 3rd party search engines.

Some times you can change the Country at the bottom of the User Guides and Support Articles, other times you can't.

Turn Power Nap on or off on Mac - Apple Support

click on it