Change your Gmail language settings

You can change the language you use to see Gmail, and use special keyboards to type in other languages.  

Change the language you use to see Gmail

An animation showing how to change the language in Gmail from a computer

  1. Open Gmail.
  2. In the top right, click Settings .
  3. Click Settings.
  4. In the "Language" section, pick a language from the drop-down menu.
  5. At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes.

Type in another language

You can type in languages like Hindi, Arabic, or Chinese using input tools, including special keyboards. There are different types of input tools for different languages.

  1. Open Gmail. You can only use input tools from a browser and not the Gmail app.
  2. In the top right, click Settings .
  3. Click Settings.
  4. In the "Language" section, click Show all language options.
  5. Check the box next to "Enable input tools."
  6. Pick the languages with which you want to use input tools, and what kind of keyboard you want to use.
  7. Click OK.
  8. At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes.
  9. Open your inbox.
  10. In the top right next to Settings , click the language icon. If you have multiple input tools, use the down arrow to switch among them.

Change the direction of the text

  1. Open Gmail. You can only use input tools from a browser and not the Gmail app.
  2. In the top right, click Settings .
  3. Click Settings.
  4. In the "Language" section, click Right-to-left editing support on.
  5. At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes.

When you start a new email, you'll need to change the direction again. In the bottom left of the compose window, click Formatting options and then Right-to-left.

Fix garbled text in emails

If you’re seeing letters from the wrong language in your emails, you’ll need to change a setting.

  1. Open your browser, like Internet Explorer or Firefox.
  2. At the top of your browser, select View and then Encoding (Internet Explorer) or Text Encoding (Safari, Firefox).
  3. From the list, choose the language you want to use.
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