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FULLY change Mac's default language (ex: recovery mode)

Hi,


I bought a used MacBook Pro 13" (early 2015). It is a french MacBook, meaning it has a French keyboard. However, I fully formatted it through a USB key with El Capitan pre-loaded, and chose English as my language throughout the setup. However, for some reason, some elements remain in French. For example, recovery mode is still in French by default. Also, oddly enough, the names of the tags in Finder are also in French, even though the whole computer and keyboard are set up in English.


Anyway to FULLY change the default language of my MacBook to English? I tried the sudo languagesetup command but that didn't fix it. I'm running 10.11.4.


Thank you!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.4), 13-inch, Early 2015

Posted on Mar 22, 2016 8:46 AM

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May 1, 2017 12:14 AM in response to BTFan

Hi there,


I just got an MBP from China and the first thing I did was change the language via System Preferences but ran into the same problems you did. My approach is slightly different and I'm trying to fix each Chinese issue I find, for example, like you my tag colours are in Chinese instead of English.


User uploaded file


Found the fix for this over here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7051387?answerId=28282328022#28282328022


I prefer to leave my NVRAM alone and anything to do with Terminal unless absolutely necessary.


Hope this helps!

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Mar 22, 2016 11:01 AM in response to Linc Davis

Hey, it worked...somewhat. Now whenever I enter recovery mode, it ALWAYS asks to choose the language. Is there any way to set English as default just like it was before (but in French)?


Also, unrelated question: my Finder tags are also in French for some reason. Any way to reset them to default? I tried deleting the finder and sidebar list plists but they weren't affected.

Thanks for your help it is greatly appreciated!

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Mar 22, 2016 12:33 PM in response to BTFan

Is there any way to set English as default just like it was before (but in French)?

As far as I know, the languagesetup command does that, but if not, I don't know of another way.

Any way to reset them to default?

If you use iCloud Drive, sign out of iCloud in its preference pane, then sign back in and see whether there's any change. No data will be removed from the servers. That said, you should always have a current archiveof the data.

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Mar 22, 2016 5:21 PM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks for all the responses I really appreciate the time you're putting into this!


Even after resetting the NVRAM and running the sudo languagesetup command, it still asks me to choose the language every time I enter recovery mode. Nonetheless, that is way better than French being the default, so thank you for that!


As for the Finder tags, I was talking about the colored one

User uploaded file

How can I fully reset those to default? Deleting the finder and sidebar list plists reset some other Finder preferences to default but not these. Thanks!

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FULLY change Mac's default language (ex: recovery mode)

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